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THE RIDDLE OF PERSONALITY 



THE RIDDLE OF 
PERSONALITY 

BY 
H. ADDINGTON BRUCE 



NEW YORK 
MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 

1908 



Copyright, 1908, by 
MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



Published March, 1908 






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The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



WILLIAM JAMES AND BORIS SIDIS 

AS A SLIGHT APPRECIATION OF THEIR EFFORTS 

TOWARDS THE CLEARER UNDERSTANDING 

OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Preface vii 

CHAPTER I 
Early Phases of the Problem 1 

CHAPTER II 
The Subliminal Self 25 

CHAPTER III 
" Pioneers of France in the New World " . . . . 53 

CHAPTER IV 

American Explorers of the SuBcoNsaous 80 

CHAPTER V 
The Evidence for Survival 107 

CHAPTER VI 
The Nemesis of Spiritism 136 

APPENDIX I 
D. D. Home and Eusapia Paladino 163 

APPENDIX n 

The Census of Hallucinations 177 

vii 



viii Contents 

APPENDIX m 

Hypnotism and the Drink Habit 186 

APPENDIX IV 
Hypnoidization 191 

APPENDIX V 

Spiritism vs. Telepathy 200 

APPENDIX VI 
Hints for Further Reading 220 

Index 241 



PREFACE 

A LARGE part of the present work 
appeared originally in the pages of 
Appleton's Magazine, the editors of 
which shared with the writer the belief that 
there was a lively desire for information con- 
cerning the discoveries made by those whose 
special endeavor has been to throw a scien- 
tific light on the nature and possibilities of 
human personality. In confirmation of this 
belief letters of inquiry and commendation 
were received from widely separated points; 
and, significantly enough, the majority of 
these related to the papers dealing more 
particularly with the curative results attained 
by investigators who would put their dis- 
coveries to practical use for the benefit of 
humanity. 

This was especially gratifying to the writer, 
because it has long been his conviction that 
lack of knowledge is the only real obstacle 
to general acceptance of the gifts which 

ix 



X Preface 

scientific exploration of personality holds out 
\ to mankind. The growth of Christian 
Science, which may perhaps be defined as 
unscientific utilization of the powers latent in 
every human being, is itself indicative of 
the popular readiness to throw down the 
bars, as it were, and advance boldly into the 
unknown region of subconscious force and 
activity now being scientifically opened up. 
But, unlike the voluminous literature pertain- 
ing to the question of the survival of persona- 
ality after bodily death, little has been written 
to illumine, for the non-scientific reader, the 
question of the hidden resources of per- 
sonality and the possibility of employing 
them to heal the individual and strengthen 
the race. Most of the works dealing with 
this subject, being addressed primarily to 
the psychologist and the physician, are 
couched in technical and difficult phraseology, 
and make such arid reading that, unless their 
importance be impressed upon the public 
mind, they are unlikely to meet with the 
wide-spread and attentive consideration which 
they merit. 

The following chapters, therefore, have 
been prepared for the purpose of indicating 



Preface xi 

first what has been accomplished thus far 
by scientific students of the self, and of assist- 
ing the reader to prosecute study on his own 
account with the aid of the technical works 
which he will find enumerated in the biblio- 
graphical essay at the close of the book — an 
essay purposely confined so far as possible 
to works of recent publication. To the 
writer's way of thinking it is impossible to 
overestimate the value, to mankind in the 
large and to the sick and suffering in particu- 
lar, of the discoveries already made by such 
savants as Liebeault, Charcot, Bernheim, and 
Janet, of France; and Sidis and Prince, of 
the United States. Their work seems to 
mark the opening of a new era for the human 
race, and in especial to point the way for the 
better equipment of the great mass of hu- 
manity to withstand the added dangers and 
strain incidental to the increasing complexi- 
ties of civilization. 

At the same time, it has not been deemed 
proper to devote this introductory volume 
entirely to the work of the psychopathologists 

— to give them their technical designation. 
The labors of another group of investigators 

— the much abused *' psychical researchers" 



xii Preface 

— had also to be taken into the reckoning, 
and for two reasons. In the first place, 
while pressing earnestly towards the goal of 
scientific demonstration that the life of man 
does not end with the grave, they have in- 
cidentally broken much new ground in the 
study of man. And, what is most important, 
they provide the necessary corrective for the 
materialistic conclusions towards which the 
investigations of the psychopathologists tend. 
The attempt has consequently been made, 
and for the first time so far as the writer is 
aware, to correlate the discoveries of the 
psychical researchers and the psychopatholo- 
gists with a view to showing that instead of 
undermining the long-cherished faith in the 
immortality of man the results of their in- 
quiries and experiments confirm and buttress 
it. 

For assistance in the preparation of his 
pages, the writer has numerous acknowledg- 
ments to make. Besides the authorities from 
w^hom he has freely quoted, he has received 
personal counsel and aid from Prof. William 
James, of Harvard University; Prof. James 
H. Hyslop, of the recently organized Ameri- 
can Institute for Scientific Research, which 



Preface xiii 

has taken the place of the American branch 
of the Society for Psychical Research; Dr. 
Boris Sidis, of Brookline, Mass.; Dr. Morton 
Prince, of Boston; Prof. Pierre Janet, of the 
College de France, and Dr. William A. White, 
superintendent of the government Hospital 
for the Insane, Washington, D. C. But 
most of all is he indebted to his wife, Lau- 
retta A. Bruce, who has given him many 
valuable suggestions, and whose critical read- 
ing of the manuscript has largely contributed 
whatever literary merit his book may possess. 

H. Addington Bruce. 

Cambridge, Mass., September, 1907 



The Riddle of Personality 

CHAPTER I 

Early Phases of the Problem 

THERE is no more absorbing and im- 
portant subject of inquiry than the 
nature and destiny of human per- 
sonaHty. From those early moments when 
the dawn of inteUigence heralded the birth 
of curiosity, what, whence, and whither have 
been the uppermost thoughts in the mind of 
man whenever, in the dim twilight of the stone 
age as in the noonday glare of the twentieth 
century, he has cast aside the preoccupations 
of every-day life and surrendered to self-com- 
muning. There is none but finds himself 
confronted with the riddle of personality and 
in some fashion seeks to give it answer. At 
the one end looms the mystery of death, mask- 
ing the vision of the future; at the other, the 
no less inscrutable mystery of birth, recapitu- 
lating in the individual the history of the 
race. And in between, from the cradle to 
the grave, the riddle of personality presses 
for reply. What is the nature of the self? 



2 The Riddle of Personality 

Whence its faculties, its capacity for pain 
and pleasure? Whence, indeed, its self- 
awareness? To such questions as these, it 
must be acknowledged, primitive man paid 
scant attention. For him the future, rather 
than the past or present, held interest, and 
peopling the universe with unseen spirits of 
good and of evil, his chief concern was to 
assure his future welfare by propitiation 
and sacrifice. But with the process of time 
man has come to realize that the question of 
the survival of personality involves the ques- 
tion of the nature of personality, and that 
whatever may be the answer to the former, 
it is in the highest degree essential to his well- 
being in bodily life that he arrive at a correct 
solution of the latter. 

It is not too much to say that the realization 
of this truth marks the greatest advance in 
the thought of man since he emerged from 
his state of savagery and ignorance. At first, 
to be sure, the problem of the nature of per- 
sonality was attacked from standpoints little 
calculated to give satisfactory results. The 
earliest appreciation of the necessity of solv- 
ing it came at a time when the human mind 
was completely dominated by the religious 



Early Phases of the Problem 3 

impulse, and in consequence the main avenue 
of approach was philosophical; a philosophy 
strongly tinged by mysticism. This condi- 
tion, with recurrent but futile waves of skep- 
ticism, prevailed until a recent day when, 
with the growth of the scientific spirit, a sin- 
gular volte face was ultimately effected. The 
nature of man, we were assured, must be 
sought in his physical composition. The 
apotheosis of this point of view came with 
the discoveries of Darwin and Wallace and 
the formulation of the evolutionary theory. 
Forthwith the tree of materialism extended 
its roots, put forth new branches, and blos- 
somed with unprecedented brilliance. Even 
to-day its foliage, at first sight, seems fresh 
and green as ever. But closer scrutiny re- 
veals the fact that it is already invaded by 
the yellows and browns of decay. In truth, 
the evolutionary theory is fated to bring 
about the passing of materialism as an ex- 
planation of the nature of human personality. 
Hardly had the evolutionists compelled accept- 
ance of their views, when the question rose: 
Why may there not be psychical as well as 
physical evolution.^ Only a few years have 
elapsed since this question was seriously pro- 



4 The Riddle of Personality 

pounded, but the inquiries which it set on 
foot have been productive of truly remark- 
able results. Acknowledging their debt to 
Darwin and Wallace, recognizing more clearly 
than before the close interrelation between 
mind and body, the latest investigators into 
the nature of personality have opened up 
broader vistas for mankind, have cleared 
the ground for freer views of the destiny of 
the race, and have pointed out new means 
of rescuing the individual from many of the 
ills that afflict his bodily existence. 

It will be the purpose of the following 
chapters to tell the story of what these 
searchers have accomplished, with especial 
reference to the bearing of their discoveries 
not only on the nature of personality "per se 
but also on the physical well-being of man. 
And in the pursuit of the latter object, it will 
be necessary to deal with the work of savants 
who would not only be the first to disclaim 
acceptance of the views adopted by certain 
of their colaborers, but would even be inclined 
to repudiate them as colaborers. The reasons 
for disclaimer and repudiation will become 
obvious as the narrative proceeds, as, I trust, 
will become also the ties that in the last analy- 



Early Phases of the Problem 5 

sis unite the several groups and warrant 
their inclusion in the present study. The 
situation is here referred to for the purpose 
of avoiding future misunderstandings. Men- 
tion of it is in fact unavoidable at this point, 
for the reason that our quest must begin with 
a glance at sundry still debatable phenomena 
which have proved the starting point for the 
modern investigators of the nature of the self, 
phenomena long neglected by science, but 
now, when at last subjected to scientific scru- 
tiny, found not devoid of significance and 
value. 

Roughly speaking, these phenomena may 
be divided into two groups, the spiritistic 
and the hypnotic. The basic idea under- 
lying all of the many subdivisions of the 
former is the ancient belief in '"spirits." It 
is not necessary to follow the evolution of 
this belief from the time when the philosophy, 
such as it was, of untutored man was wholly 
controlled and colored by his childlike con- 
fidence in the presence and intervention of 
supermundane beings. Our point of de- 
parture is rather at the moment when the 
spiritistic idea began to assume the com- 
plexion of an organized religious system. 



6 The Riddle of Personality 

This need take us back only to the second 
quarter of the nineteenth century, to the days 
of Andrew Jackson Davis and the Fox sisters. 
It is quite true that long before their time, 
thanks to the teachings of Swedenborg, and 
the trance phenomena of ^"mesmerized" sub- 
jects, the idea that the spirits of the dead can 
and do communicate with the living had 
been established as a popular concept. But 
the founder of modern spiritism ^ was not 
Swedenborg (whose views, as a matter of 
fact, are at variance from those of the spirit- 
ists) but Davis. The latter was born in 1826 
in a rural district of the State of New York. 
When he was twelve years old his parents 
removed to Poughkeepsie, whence he derived 
the name of the '* Poughkeepsie Seer,'' by 
which he was known in after years. He 
seems to have been a delicate lad, to have 
been backward as a child, and to have re- 
ceived little education. At the age of fifteen 
he was apprenticed to a shoemaker. In 1843 

1 Throughout I purpose using the term "spiritism" in preference 
to "spiritualism" when referring to the religious system that has 
been constructed about the central idea of communication with the 
dead. I do this for the reason that, strictly speaking, the terra 
"spiritualism" should be applied only to the philosophical system 
opposed to materialism. 



Early Phases of the Problem 7 

a series of lectures on "" animal magnetism" 
were delivered in Poughkeepsie, and an en- 
thusiastic tailor undertook to mesmerize young 
Davis. So well did he succeed that the two 
formed a partnership, Davis serving as a 
professional medical clairvoyant; that is to 
say, while in an entranced condition pre- 
scribing for diseases. In 1844, according to 
his own account, he was, while entranced, 
visited by the spirits of Galen and Sweden- 
borg, who assured him that the world was 
about to receive through him messages of 
the highest moment. Thereafter he began 
to deliver a course of clairvovant lectures, 
which were ultimately published in book 
form under the title of ""The Principles of 
Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and A Voice 
to Mankind.'' This, regarded from any point 
of view, was a remarkable production. It 
consisted of some eight hundred closely 
printed pages containing an elaborate dis- 
quisition on the philosophy of the universe. 
To many of his contemporaries, and to not a 
few of the present generation, it seemed in- 
credible that a work of this kind could have 
been written by the unaided intellect of a 
half-educated shoemaker, and consequently 



8 The Riddle of Personality 

wide credence was found for the claim that 
it was of ''inspirational'' origin. Here, it 
was argued, was a man who undoubtedly 
held converse with the spirits of the illustrious 
dead, and by them was instructed in the 
secrets of the universe. 

The excitement created by the appearance 
of ''The Principles of Nature'' had not sub- 
sided when fresh fuel was found for the spir- 
itistic fire. On the evening of the 31st of 
March, 1848, a Mrs. Fox, the wife of a farmer 
living in the small village of Hydesville, N. Y., 
astounded her neighbors by the information 
that her two young daughters had estab- 
lished communication with the dead. In 
their case the claim was made that the mes- 
sages were received not"inspirationally" but 
by means of loud knockings, the "spirits" 
giving evidence of intelligence by repeatedly 
making the exact number of raps requested 
by one of the daughters. The Fox home- 
stead instantly became the Mecca of a dozen 
or more inquisitive villagers, who were re- 
warded by receiving from the "spirits" 
accurate information respecting the number, 
ages, and characteristics of families resident 
in the vicinity. A few evenings later it was 



Early Phases of the Problem 9 

declared, through the same uncanny rap- 
pings, that a murder had been committed in 
the Fox house some years before, and that 
the body of the victim had been buried in the 
cellar. Investigation was made, and at a 
depth of several feet below the cellar ifloor 
teeth, bones, and hair supposed to be human 
were found. 

The fame of Margaretta and Catherine 
Fox now became more than local, and was 
the more increased when Margaretta went 
to Rochester to visit a married sister, a Mrs. 
Fish, and Catherine journeyed to Auburn to 
stay with friends. Forthwith the raps fol- 
lowed them, and not only this but manifested 
a willingness to be produced through the 
instrumentality of other than the Fox sisters. 
Mrs. Fish herself became a medium for the 
mysterious sounds, as did many other per- 
sons in Rochester, and the same result fol- 
lowed Catherine Fox's sojourn in Auburn. 
Modern spiritism had been fairly launched. 
As one of the sanest writers on the subject 
says : 

^'Sometimes the contagion was conveyed 
by a casual visit. Thus Miss Harriet Bebee, 
a young lady of sixteen, had an interview of 



10 The Riddle of Personality 

a few hours with Mrs. TamKn, a medium of 
Auburn, and on her return to her own home, 
twenty miles distant, the raps forthwith broke 
out in her presence. In the course of the 
next two or three years, indeed, the rappings 
had spread throughout the greater part of 
the Eastern States. Thus a writer in the 
New Haven Journal in October, 1850, refers 
to knockings and other phenomena in seven 
different famihes in Bridgeport, forty famiHes 
in Rochester, in Auburn, in Syracuse, 'some 
two hundred' in Ohio, in New Jersey, and 
places more distant, as well as in Hartford, 
Springfield, Charlestown, and elsewhere. A 
year later a correspondent of the Spiritual 
World estimated that there were a hundred 
mediums in New York City, and fifty or sixty 
'private circles' were reported in Philadel- 
phia.''^ 

In vain clergymen fulminated, and scien- 
tists demonstrated that the rappings could be 
produced by rapid movements of the toe- or 
knee- joints. Spiritism spread with an alac- 
rity only paralleled in later days by the growth 
of Christian Science. Sometimes the zeal 
of the converts led to the most bizarre happen- 

1 "Modem Spiritualism," by Frank Podmore, Vol. I, p. 182. 



Early Phases of the Problem 11 

ings. Take, for instance, the case of Jonathan 
Koons, a farmer who lived in a remote and 
mountainous district in Ohio. In 1852 he 
chanced to attend a spiritistic seance, and it 
was revealed to him that he and his eight 
children were superabundantly gifted with 
mediumistic ability. On returning home 
Koons proceeded, under the direction of spirit 
guides, to build a seance house, a log struc- 
ture intended for spiritistic purposes exclu- 
sively. This he equipped with a 'spirit table' 
and a great variety of musical instruments. 
Benches were provided for the sitters. On 
seance evenings the log cabin became a ver- 
itable concert hall, the music being provided 
by a spirit orchestra. There were other 
startling physical manifestations. We read 
of tambourines flying through the air as 
though provided with wings, and of the 
materiahzation of spirit hands. Oddly 
enough, all these performances were attrib- 
uted to the spirits of a large band of pre- 
Adamite men and women. 

At first physical phenomena dominated the 
spiritistic movement, increasing in variety 
and strangeness as the novelty of the earlier 
manifestations wore away. So long ago as 



12 The Riddle of Personality 

1849 the raps were supplemented by the mov- 
ing about of tables and chairs. A little later 
the phenomenon of ^^apports'' was witnessed 
in the production, apparently from the air, 
of ribbons, flowers, and so forth. Nature's 
laws were soon afterwards set further at 
naught by the feats of a young Scotch me- 
dium, Daniel Dunglas Home, who, both in 
the Old World and the New, produced phe- 
nomena which must have caused less gifted 
mediums to turn green with envy. His 
crowning triumphs were "levitation,'' in which 
he seemed to be lifted bodily and transported 
about the seance room without visible sup- 
port, and ^'elongation,'' in which the spirits 
caused him to grow temporarily several inches 
beyond his normal height. The assurance 
is gravely given that on at least one occasion 
Home actuallv floated out of a window of one 
room and returned by floating in through the 
window of another.^ Slate writing and table 
tipping were other less sensational but ex- 
tremely popular diversions of the spirits. 
But in point of bearing upon the inquiry into 
the nature of human personality, none of 
these physical phenomena have the signifi- 

1 See Appendix I. 



Early Phases of the Problem 13 

cance of the later ^'psychicar' phenomena, 
the alleged interworld communications through 
trance mediums of the type of which Mrs. 
Leonora E. Piper, of Boston, is the most 
celebrated representative to-day. Andrew 
Jackson Davis, of course, belonged to this 
class, but inspirational, or ''automatic,'' speak- 
ing and writing did not become a distinctive 
feature of the spiritistic movement until the 
physical phase had had its innings, so to speak. 
In addition to inspirational speaking and 
writing, the more salient psychical phenomena 
include clairvoyance, the faculty of perceiv- 
ing, as if visually, scenes transpiring at a dis- 
tance; clairaudience, the sensation of hearing 
a distant voice, and crystal-gazing, the act 
of looking into a crystal, or other body with 
a reflecting surface, and seeing therein hal- 
lucinatory pictures. It is important to ob- 
serve that instances of all these phenomena 
were reported centuries before the appearance 
of spiritism as a religion. For instance, 
many of the deliverances of the ancient Greek 
oracles were supposed to be derived through 
dreams and clairvoyance of some kind. The 
practice of crystal-gazing. Professor Hyslop 
has found, w^as known in some form three 



14 The Riddle of Personality , 

thousand years ago, reaching its highest 
development in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, when its exponents included "'the 
learned physicians and mathematicians of 
the courts of Elizabeth, the Italian princes, the 
Regent Catherine de Medici, and the Em- 
perors Maximilian and Rudolph."^ But in 
those bygone, superstitious times psychical 
phenomena of a seemingly supernormal type 
were regarded as being, in a sense, part of the 
natural order of things. There was little or 
no inclination to hold them suspect, although 
there was every inclination to ill use the 
hapless "'mediums,'' particularly if they 
acquired the reputation of being sorcerers. 
With the growth of science came a new stand- 
point, a cursory dismissal of the phenomena 
as either fraudulent or unworthy of investiga- 
tion. It was this tendency, which still per- 
sists but with diminished vigor, that was 
responsible for the long delay in subjecting the 
claims of organized spiritism to really search- 
ing scrutiny; it was this tendency that caused 
a deaf ear to be turned to those who claimed 
to have experienced the kindred phenomenon 

* For an informing survey of crystal-gazing, see Professor Hyslop's 
"Enigmas of Psychical Research," pp. 40-91. 



Early Phases of the Problem 15 

of seeing apparitions of the dead or dying; it 
was this tendency, again, that prevented 
earher recognition of the truths underlying 
the marvels of hypnotism. 

With this we approach our second great 
group of phenomena rich in significance to 
the modern student of personality. And, 
once more, although the annals of hypnotism 
extend back to the days when Egypt and 
Babylon were in their prime, our introductory 
survey may begin at a recent date, may begin 
with the closing years of the eighteenth cen- 
tury when Franz Anton Mesmer introduced 
many of its striking phenomena to the Euro- 
pean world. Charlatan though he was, man- 
kind owes a greater debt to him than has 
generally been acknowledged. As the present 
writer has elsewhere said: ^^When Mesmer 
published in 1773 his account of the mar- 
velous cures effected by what he was pleased 
to term animal magnetism, he sowed seed 
w^hich was to render inevitable the diligent 
husbandry of to-day.''^ Grant that hypno- 
tism had still to be clarified by the researches 
of an Esdaile, an EUiotson, a Braid, a Char- 

1 "Mysteries of the Human Mind." Pvblic Opinion, Vol. 
XXXIX, p. 355. 



16 The Riddle of Personality 

cot, a Liebeault, a Gurney, before it became 
what it is to-day — a wonderful curative 
instrument and aid to psychological experi- 
mentation; grant all this, and Mesmer remains 
the first of a line of psychotherapeutists and 
psychopathologists whose fame, if belated, is 
steadily growing. That he should have been 
rebufi'ed by the orthodox practitioners of his 
day is not surprising. When, in 1778, he 
came to Paris, he came with a well developed 
sense of the value of advertising. The cam- 
paign he inaugurated was of a character to 
disgust the conservative and thoughtful, but 
to take a sensation-loving populace by storm. 
Most extravagant tales of cures he had accom- 
plished in Berlin, Vienna, and elsewhere were 
noised abroad. Through a convert he chal- 
lenged the physicians of Paris to enter into a 
contest with him, they to treat twelve patients 
by the orthodox methods, he to treat twelve 
by his. Of course this challenge was re- 
jected, and equally, of course, its rejection 
was interpreted by the thoughtless as an 
acknowledgment of the superiority of Mes- 
mer's treatment. His rooms were thronged; 
his purse waxed constantly heavier. 

The treatment he gave was such as to 



Early Phases of the Problem 17 

appeal vividly to the imagination of the 
patient; in a word, to increase his suggesti- 
bility. Suggestion, indeed, was its root ele- 
ment, although Mesmer failed or pretended 
to fail to recognize this, and taught that its 
eflBcacy depended upon the effluence of a 
mysterious fluid. In a room dimly lighted 
and hung with mirrors, the patients were 
seated about a circular vat of considerable 
size, covered with a lid and containing various 
chemicals. A long cord connected the patients 
with one another, while in the lid of the tub 
were several holes, through each of which 
passed an iron rod bent in such a way that 
its point could be applied to any part of a 
patient's body. The patients were requested 
not to speak, the only sound in the room being 
strains of soft music. When expectancy was 
at its flood, Mesmer would enter, clad in the 
robe of a magician and carrying an iron 
wand. At one patient he would gaze in- 
tently, another he would stroke gently with 
his wand. Soon some would burst into 
laughter, others into tears, while still others 
would fall into convulsions, finally passing 
into a lethargic state, out of which, it is 
claimed, they emerged cured or on the high- 



18 The Riddle of Personality 

road to a cure. Occasionally the treatment 
was given outdoors, a tree being "magnet- 
ized'' and the patient collapsing in a swoon 
so soon as he approached it. 

In such wise were Europeans first made 
acquainted with the phenomenon of the 
''induced trance." It was speedily discovered 
that the magnetized patients, although to all 
appearance in a completely unconscious con- 
dition, could hear and reply to the magnetizer, 
and could even diagnose their own maladies 
with a skill sometimes exceeding that of the 
physician, and prescribe remedies with con- 
fidence and excellent results. It was also 
learned that upon recovering their normal 
sensibility they were oblivious to all that had 
transpired during the period of trance. 
Further, if the contemporary records are to 
be accepted, they sometimes displayed clair- 
voyant and clairaudient ability. What might 
be the cause of such manifestations was a 
subject of the most acrimonious dispute. 
Those who had fallen under the influence of 
Swedenborg's teachings maintained that here 
was direct evidence of spirit manifestation.^ 

* Thus, in support of this view, a member of a Swedish society 
founded in Stockholm for the purpose of propagating Swedenborg's 



Early Phases of the Problem 19 

The magnetizers, however, clung obstinately 
to the fluidic idea, stating the case thus: In 
obeying the will of the operator the patient 
simply acted as an ^'animated magnet,'' 
and the magnetic fluid being universal, it 
necessarily followed that the patient could 
apprehend much inaccessible to his or her 
knowledge when unmagnetized. But long be- 
fore this question became acute the excitement 
created by Mesmer had caused the Govern- 
ment to take official cognizance of his exploits. 
A commission of investigation was appointed, 
among its members being none other than 
Benjamin Franklin, then almost an octogena- 
rian but interested as ever in scientific re- 
search. For some reason the commissioners 
did not inquire into the curative merits of the 
new treatment, confining their labors to the 
problem of the magnetic fluid. Naturally, 

doctrines, published a number of extracts from journals of trance 
experiments. These indicated that, in the presence of several 
Swedish noblemen, the wife of a gardener, while in the magnetic 
trance, was "controlled" by two spirits, one of whom was declared 
to have been her own infant daughter. Both, according to the 
extracts, in reply to questions put by the bystanders, gave an account 
of their lives while on earth, and, in true Swedenborgian fashion, 
described the state of intermediate or probationary existence through 
T\'hich the spirits of the dead had to pass after leaving the body. 
See also Podmore's "Modem Spirituahsm," Vol. I, pp. 76 and 77. 



20 The Riddle of Personality 

they had Httle difficulty in demonstrating that 
it was impossible to procure evidential proof 
of the fluid, and in their report affirmed that 
'^the effects actually produced were produced 
purely by the imagination/' 

The commissioners had stated the truth, 
but years were to pass before it was refined 
from the dross of fluidistic and spiritistic 
philosophy. The history of hypnotism dur- 
ing the period intervening between Mesmer 
and Braid makes dreary reading, being il- 
lumined by only occasional flashes rendered 
the brighter by the dark background of mys- 
ticism and charlatanism against which they 
shone. In this period three names stand pre- 
eminent, Bertrand, Esdaile, and Elliotson. 
Bertrand was a young French physician who, 
in 1823, published a ''Traite du Somnam- 
bulism'' in which, and in another work issued 
three years later, he reviewed the achieve- 
ments and theories of the magnetists, and 
expressed the view that suggestion pure and 
simple explained all the phenomena, the 
patient being preternormally sensitive to the 
least suggestion from the operator. Death, 
however, removed Bertrand before he had 
the time to elaborate his doctrine of sugges- 



Early Phases of the Problem 21 

tion and persuade the scientific world of its 
validity. Esdaile was less of a theorizer, but 
by his remarkable operations upon hypno- 
tized Hindoos in the Presidency Hospital at 
Calcutta, of which he was long surgeon- 
general, he did much to demonstrate the use- 
fulness of hypnotism as an aid to surgery. 
Incidentally, he also demonstrated the pos- 
sibility of ''community of sensation'' between 
the operator and his subject. This he did 
through a young Hindoo who had previously 
been operated on painlessly while in the hyp- 
notic trance. In turn Dr. Esdaile took in 
his mouth salt, a slice of lime, a piece of 
gentian, and some brandy, and the Hindoo, 
who was reported to have been mesmerized 
until he could not open his eyes, in every case 
identified the taste. This, it may be noted, 
is one of the earliest recorded instances of a 
telepathic experiment. To Elliotson belongs 
the distinction of having made mesmerism 
popular in England as a curative instrument. 
But he was a man "born out of due time," 
hasty and reckless, and did not confine himself 
to using the mesmeric sleep as a therapeutic 
agent or auxiliary, claiming to demonstrate 
many other phenomena of a dubious kind. 



22 The Riddle of Personaltiy 

Thus, he asserted that the mesmeric influ- 
ence was greatly heightened or lessened by 
the use of different metals and other sub- 
stances. According to him, gold, nickel, silver, 
platinum, and water were excellent conduc- 
tors, particularly gold and nickel, although 
the ^'eflBuence'' from the latter was of a vio- 
lent and dangerous nature; copper, zinc, tin, 
and pewter, unless wet, were non-conductors. 
As a natural consequence there resulted from 
his admixture of sense and nonsense, a general 
discrediting alike of his views and his prac- 
tices, and a postponement of the acceptance 
of any of the mesmeric phenomena until the 
situation was clarified by the genius of Braid. 
Braid, who was a Manchester physician 
of standing, may justly be described as the 
first really scientific student of mesmerism. 
It was he who gave it the name of hypnotism, 
and it was he, too, who discovered that the 
trance condition could be induced without 
the intervention of any operator, by the mere 
fixation of the subject's eyes on a bright ob- 
ject. The results of his independent obser- 
vations and experiments were made public 
in a book in which he corroborated the con- 
clusions of Bertrand respecting the source of 



Early Phases of the Problem 23 

the phenomena, averring that they were not 
due to any power passing from one individ- 
ual to another, through disks, ''passes,'' or 
other mechanical agency, but to the action 
of suggestion. In support of this view he 
described a number of experiments made 
not on professional but private subjects, 
some wide awake, some hypnotized, in which 
all the characteristic phenomena described 
by the mesmerists were obtained without the 
use of any magnet. Elliotson and the other 
English mesmerists hastened to deride Braid's 
''coarse methods," and although the latter 
lived until 1860, he did not live to witness the 
general recognition that his theory of sug- 
gestion has obtained through the researches 
of Gurney, Liebeault, Charcot, and their dis- 
ciples, whose work we shall need to examine 
in some detail. 

Here, then, in brief outline are the phe- 
nomena which, long neglected by men of 
scientific training and attainment, have latterly 
been found to constitute a fruitful field for 
cultivation. The harvest began when a little 
coterie of Cambridge men, impressed with 
the irrationality of attempting to solve psychi- 
cal problems by physical processes alone, 



24 The Riddle of Personality 

with the marvelous growth of spiritistic ideas, 
and with the fact that the phenomena of spirit- 
ism had received no adequate investigation, 
resolved that they would do all that in their 
power lay to promote a sentiment of scientific 
inquiry into whatever was deemed to transcend 
the bounds of normal experience. 



CHAPTER II 

The Subliminal Self 

THE movement to institute a far- 
reaching, systematic, and scientific 
inquiry into the nature and destiny 
of human personality originated, as has just 
been said, in England at the University of 
Cambridge. It owed its inception chiefly to 
the efforts of two friends, Henry Sidgwick 
and Frederic W. H. Myers, both of whom 
w^ere cut down by the relentless hand of death 
when at the zenith of their powers. Pro- 
fessor Sidgwick was a philosopher of the best 
type. His was a philosophy not of the cloister 
but of the world. Catholic in his interests and 
sanguine and enthusiastic by temperament, 
he was saved from rash judgments by his 
acutely analytical frame of mind. So pene- 
trating indeed was his insight that the slightest 
distinction or qualification seldom escaped 
him, and in his generation he was, perhaps, 
without a peer in the nice balancing of facts. 

25 



26 The Riddle of Personality 

Alike in philosophy, in psychology, in political 
economy, and in literary criticism he oc- 
cupied a notable place. Myers was poet 
rather than philosopher. Artist and idealist, 
he radiated an unfailing sympathy for the 
aspirations and sufferings of mankind, and if, 
as many think, he passed to unwarranted 
extremes in the conclusions he ultimately 
voiced, to him not the less belongs the credit 
of having thrown a flood of helpful light on 
the workings of the human mind. "Myers,'" 
Prof. William James has well said, "endowed 
psychology with a new problem — the ex- 
ploration of the subliminal region being des- 
tined to figure thereafter in that branch of 
learning as Myers's problem." Of this, more 
again. 

At first, as may be imagined, the two friends 
and those who with misgivings embarked 
with them on what must have seemed a hope- 
less voyage, were somewhat at a loss whither 
to point prow. " Our methods,'' Myers wrote, 
in recalling that period of young endeavor, 
"our canons, were all to make. In those 
early days we were more devoid of precedents, 
of guidance, even of criticism that went be- 
yond mere expressions of contempt, than is 



The Subliminal Self 27 

now readily conceived/'^ This was in the 
seventies. Before the decade was at an end, 
it was possible for him to recall: ''Seeking 
evidence as best we could — collecting round 
us a small group of persons willing to help in 
that quest for residual phenomena in the na- 
ture and experience of man — we were at last 
fortunate enough to discover a convergence 
of experimental and of spontaneous evidence 
upon one definite and important point. We 
were led to believe that there was truth in a 
thesis which, at least since Swedenborg and 
the early mesmerists, had been repeatedly 
but cursorily and ineffectually presented to 
mankind — the thesis that a communication 
can take place from mind to mind by some 
agency not that of the recognized organs of 
sense. We found that this agency, discerni- 
ble even on trivial occasions by suitable ex- 
periment, seemed to connect itself with an 
agency more intense, or at any rate more 
recognizable, which operated at moments of 
crisis or at the hour of death.'' ^ 

In this way was evidence in support of the 
theory of telepathy first experimentally and 

1 Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death." By 
F. W. H. Myers. Vol. I, p. 7. ^ Ibid., Vol. I, p. 8. 



28 The Riddle of Personality 

cumulatively secured. Further proof was not 
long in forthcoming after the little group of 
investigators had expanded into the Society 
for Psychical Research, which was founded 
in 1882 with Professor Sidgwick as its first 
president and until the day of his death per- 
haps its most influential member, exercising 
at once a stimulating and restraining influence 
on its activities and conclusions. The leading 
spirit in organizing the society was, however, 
neither Professor Sidgwick nor Mr. Myers, 
but Prof. W. F. Barrett, of Dublin, who in 
1876 had read a paper before the British 
Association expressing his belief in telepathy 
and urging the formation of a committee to 
undertake experiments in thought-transfer- 
ence. No action was taken on his sugges- 
tion, but the formation of the Society for 
Psychical Research was the outcome of re- 
newed agitation by him in 1881. Its object 
was to investigate not only the possibility of 
the transmission of thought from mind to 
mind without the intervention of known 
means of communication, ''but all that large 
group of phenomena outside the boundaries 
of orthodox science." Thus its scope of in- 
quiry embraced on the one hand, apparitions, 



The Subliminal Self 29 

hauntings, clairvoyance, clairaudience, rap- 
pings, and like problems of mediumship ; and 
on the other, the phenomena of hypnotism. 
It was determined that, as scientific ends 
were sought, strictly scientific methods must 
be followed, a determination that had the 
fortunate result of soon severing from the 
society sundry confessed spiritists who had 
hastened to identify themselves with it. From 
the outset and up to the present, moreover, it 
has included in its membership men promi- 
nent in public and professional life (its list 
of presidents comprising, among others, the 
names of Professor Sidgwick, Arthur Balfour, 
Professor James, Sir William Crookes, Sir 
Oliver Lodge, and Professor Richet), and 
while it has latterly concerned itself princi- 
pally with the ever-baffling question of the 
survival of personality after the death of the 
body, and in the opinion of some observers 
seems to have developed into an organization 
for the propagation of spiritism, it assuredly 
has rendered yeoman's service both in the 
direction of protecting the public against 
fraudulent mediums and by way of making 
clearer the constitution and functioning of 
the mind of normal as well as abnormal man. 



30 The Riddle of Personality 

To resume. With the organization of the 
society, telepathic experiments were attempted 
on an extensive scale, and in addition to this 
the task of collecting evidence for spontane- 
ous telepathy was vigorously prosecuted. In 
both directions no one, during the early years 
of the society, was more energetic and success- 
ful than one of its youngest members, Edmund 
Gurney. Gurney was just thirty-five when, 
in 1882, he undertook the work of psychical 
research, and before his death, which occurred 
only six years later, he had accomplished 
much, particularly in the simplification of the 
facts of hypnotism, the psychological side of 
which he was the first Englishman to study 
with scientific discernment. From the begin- 
ning of the society's labors, hypnotism, as 
utilized by Gurney, Myers, Barrett, and Pro- 
fessor and Mrs. Sidgwick, played a prominent 
part in experimental telepathy, it being found 
that the chances for success were greatly 
increased when the *' percipient'' (the one 
who was to receive the mental communication, 
the sender being technically known as the 
'"agent") was in the hypnotic state. For the 
details of the successive experiments I must 
refer the reader to the society's oflScial records 



The Subliminal Self 31 

as published in its ^'Proceedings/' and espe- 
cially to the first ten volumes of the ''Pro- 
ceedings.'' For our present purpose it is 
sufficient to observe that the society's Literary 
Committee, then consisting of W. F. Barrett, 
Charles C. Massey, Rev. W. Stainton Moses, 
Frank Podmore, Edmund Gurney, and F. W. 
H. Myers, felt justified in affirming, so early 
as 1884; "Our society claims to have proved 
the reality of thought-transference — of the 
transmission of thoughts, feelings, and images 
from one mind to another by no recognized 
channel of sense." ^ And, a little later in the 
same year, as the result of a prolonged inquiry 
into the rationale of apparitions, we find the 
same committee proffering a telepathic ex- 
planation in these words: 

"Our aim is to trace the connection between 
the most trivial phenomena of thought-trans- 
ference, or confused inklings of disaster, and 
the full-blown 'apparition' of popular belief. 
And, once on the track, we find group after 
group of transitional experiences illustrating 
the degrees by which a stimulus, falling or 
fallen from afar upon some obscure subcon- 

1 "Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research," Vol. II, 
p. 44. 



32 The Riddle of Personality 

scious region of the percipient's mind, may 
seem to disengage itself from his subjectivity 
and emerge into the waking world/' ^ 

At this point it is not necessary to discuss 
the question of the validity of the application 
of the telepathic theory as affording a natural- 
istic explanation of apparitions. Of imme- 
diate importance in the above quotation is the 
reference to subconscious regions of the mind. 
Already it had dawned upon the investigators 
that varied as were the phenomena of hypno- 
tism, trance mediumship, and apparitions, 
they had this in common that they seemed 
to hint at the existence of mental faculties pre- 
viously unsuspected. With this the inquiry 
entered upon a new phase. The obvious 
question rose: If under certain conditions, 
still to be exactly ascertained, the range of 
human consciousness may be immeasurably 
extended, is it not possible, nay probable, 
that the prevailing ideas of the nature of con- 
sciousness, or rather of the nature of the self, 
are erroneous } 

To the solution of the problem thus pre- 
sented, none pressed more earnestly than 

1 "Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research," Vol. II, 
p. 164. 



The Subliminal Self 33 

Frederic Myers. For starting point he had 
the popular concept of the nature of per- 
sonahty as best expressed in the philosopher 
Reid's ''Essays on the Intellectual Powers of 
Man:'' 

"My personal identity, therefore, implies 
the continued existence of that indivisible 
thing which I call myself. Whatever this self 
may be, it is something which thinks and 
deliberates and resolves and acts and suffers. 
I am not thought, I am not action, I am not 
feeling; I am something that thinks and acts 
and suffers. My thoughts and actions and 
feelings change every moment; they have no 
continued, but a successive, existence; but 
that self, or I, to which they belong, is per- 
manent, and has the same relation to all the 
succeeding thoughts, actions, and feelings 
which I call mine. . . . The identity of a per- 
son is a perfect identity; wherever it is real 
it admits of no degrees; and it is impossible 
that a person should be in part the same and 
in part different, because a person is a monad 
and is not divisible into parts. Identity, 
when applied to persons, has no ambiguity, 
and admits not of degrees, or of more and 
less. It is the foundation of all rights and 



34 The Riddle of Personality 

obligations, and of all accountableness; and 
the notion of it is fixed and precise."^ 

Nothing could be clearer or more exact, 
and as a statement of the nature of person- 
ality it had gone unchallenged since its for- 
mulation a century and more before. But to 
Myers, as to the Frenchmen who were now 
attacking the same problem from another 
standpoint and whose work will shortly be 
reviewed, it seemed to have lost much of its 
force by reason of the discoveries made since 
spiritism and hypnotism had become subjects 
for serious study. If unity and continuity 
be prime facts of the ego, what becomes 
of the ego in the disintegrations affecting 
it during bodily life.^ Where locate it in 
insanity, in hysteria, in somnambulism, spon- 
taneous or induced, in the trance states of 
mediums apparently surrendering their or- 
ganism to the control of some extraneous 
self } Still more perplexing becomes the prob- 
lem, on the basis of the "common sense" 
view of personality, when there is involved 
complete, or seemingly complete, disintegra- 
tions such as those revealed in the experiences 
of Mary Reynolds and Ansel Bourne. 

1 Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man," By Thomas Reid, 
pp. 318-321. 



The Subliminal Self 35 

Both of these cases are worth relating, not 
only from their scientific significance but by 
reason of their intrinsic interest. The former 
dates back to the opening years of the nine- 
teenth century. One morning Mary, the 
daughter of a Pennsylvania pioneer named 
Reynolds, was found in a deep sleep from 
which it was impossible to arouse her. 
Awakening some twenty hours later, she 
awoke as a new-born child. Memory had 
vanished, and with it all knowledge of the 
acquisitions of experience and education. 
Parents, brothers, sisters, friends were un- 
recognized. To her, reading, writing, even 
talking, were unknown arts, and had to be 
relearned. It was noticed, too, that her tem- 
perament had undergone a marked change. 
Formerly melancholy, dull, and taciturn, she 
now was cheerful, alert, and social. Thus she 
continued for five weeks when, after a long 
sleep, she suddenly awoke her natural, or 
at any rate her former, self, and without any 
remembrance of the events of the intervening 
period. Only a few weeks more and she had 
relapsed into the secondary state, and thus, 
alternating between the two phases, she 
passed her life from the age of twenty to that 



36 The Riddle of Personality 

of thirty-five, when she remained perma- 
nently in the secondary condition, not once 
recovering her normal personality to the day 
of her death, which did not occur until a 
quarter of a century later. 

The case of Ansel Bourne presents a differ- 
ent aspect. Early in 1887, Mr. Bourne, an 
itinerant preacher, then aged sixty-one and 
residing in the town of Greene, R. I., went to 
Providence in order to procure money to pay 
for a farm. After drawing the money from 
the bank, he visited the store of a nephew, 
Andrew Harris, and then started for his sister's 
house, also in Providence. That was the last 
known of his movements for eight weeks, 
when he was discovered, under most sensa- 
tional circumstances, at Norristown, Pa. It 
seems that about a fortnight after the disap- 
pearance of Mr. Bourne a stranger arrived 
in Norristown and, under the name of A. J. 
Brown, rented from a Mr. Earle a store which 
he stocked with notions, toys, confectionery, 
etc. The store was part of the dwelling- 
place of the Earle family, and as Mr. Brown 
lived with them they saw him frequently, but 
at no time observed anything peculiar in his 
demeanor. On the contrary, it was remarked 



The Subliminal Self 37 

that he was exceptionally steady-going, me- 
thodical, and precise. Nobody, in a word, 
suspected that he might be laboring under 
some form of mental vagary. About five 
o'clock on the morning of March 14th, how- 
ever, he aroused the Earles and excitedly de- 
manded information as to his whereabouts. 
He denied that his name was Brown, and 
asserted that his landlord and his landlord's 
family were entire strangers to him. Think- 
ing that he had suddenly become insane, Mr. 
Earle summoned a physician who at Mr. 
"Brown's" request telegraphed Andrew 
Harris: '^Do you know Ansel Bourne ? Please 
answer." Soon the reply came: ''He is my 
uncle. Wire me where he is, and if well. 
Write particulars." Subsequently Mr. Harris 
visited Norristown, disposed of his uncle's 
stock of goods, and took the extremely be- 
wildered Mr. Bourne home with him. Later 
Professor James and Dr. Richard Hodgson 
hypnotized the aged preacher and succeeded 
in eliciting from him a detailed account of his 
doings during the eight weeks of his disap- 
pearance, securing facts which he had been 
utterly unable to give previous to hypnotiza- 
tion. To quote from Dr. Hodgson's report 
on the case: 



38 The Riddle of Personality 

"He said [while in the hypnotic state] that 
his name was Albert John Brown, that on 
January 17, 1887, he went from Providence 
to Pawtucket in a horse-car, thence by train 
to Boston, and thence to New York, where 
he arrived at 9 p.m., and went to the Grand 
Union Hotel, registering as A. J. Brown. He 
left New York on the following morning and 
went to Newark, N. J., thence to Philadel- 
phia, where he arrived in the evening, and 
stayed for three or four days in a hotel near 
the depot. It was kept by two ladies, but he 
could not remember their names. He thought 
of taking a store in a small tow^n, and after 
looking round at several places, among them 
Germantown, chose Norristown, about twenty 
miles from Philadelphia, where he started a 
little business of five-cent goods, confectionery, 
stationery, etc. 

''He stated that he was born in Newton, 
New Hampshire, July 8, 1826 (he was born 
in New York City, July 8, 1826), had passed 
through a great deal of trouble, losses of 
friends and property; loss of his wife was one 
trouble — she died in 1881; three children 
living — but everything was confused prior 
to his finding himself in the horse-car on the 



The Subliminal Self 39 

way to Pawtucket; he wanted to get away 
somewhere — he didn't know where — and 
have rest. He had six or seven hundred dol- 
lars with him when he went into the store. 
He Hved very closely, boarded by himself, 
and did his own cooking. He went to church, 
and also to one prayer-meeting. At one of 
these meetings he spoke about a boy who had 
kneeled down and prayed in the midst of the 
passengers on a steamboat from Albany to 
New York [an incident of which he was well 
aware in the Ansel Bourne personality]. 

"He had heard of the singular experience 
of Ansel Bourne, but did not know whether 
he had ever met Ansel Bourne or not. He 
had been a professor of religion himself for 
many years, belonged to the 'Christian' de- 
nomination, but 'back there' everything was 
mixed up. He used to keep a store in New- 
ton, New Hampshire, and was engaged in 
lumber and trading business [Ansel Bourne 
had at one time been a carpenter]; had never 
previously dealt in the business which he 
took up at Norristown. He kept the Norris- 
town store for six or eight weeks; how he got 
away from there was all confused; since then 
it has been a blank. The last thing he re- 



40 The Riddle of Personality 

membered about the store was going to bed 
on Sunday night, March 13, 1887. He 
went to the Methodist Church in the morning, 
walked out in the afternoon, stayed in his 
room in the evening and read a book. He 
did not feel 'anything out of the way.' Went 
to bed at eight or nine o'clock, and remem- 
bered lying in bed, but nothing further. 

"The statements made by Mr. Bourne in 
trance concerning his doings in Norristown 
agree with those made by his landlord there 
and other persons; but since Mr. Bourne, in 
his normal state, has heard of these, they 
afforded no presumption in favor of the cor- 
rectness of his statements concerning the first 
two weeks of his absence, those which imme- 
diately preceded his arrival in Norristown. 
The register-books of the hotels had been 
destroyed, so that we were unable to trace 
his travels in detail by finding the name 'A. J. 
Brown' at the hotels which he described him- 
self as having visited. We have, however, 
through the kindness of Mr. William Romaine 
Newbold, lecturer on psychology in the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania, ascertained that he 
boarded for a week or more at the Kellogg 
House, Nos. 1605-7 Filbert Street, Phila- 



The Subliminal Self 41 

delphia. Mr. Newbold's report seeras to 
establish the general trustworthiness of Mr. 
Bourne's account (in trance) of his doings 
before going to Norristovvn.'' 

Bearing in mind a peculiar incident that 
had occurred in Mr. Bourne's life thirty years 
before — when he was stricken deaf, dumb, 
and blind, after declaring that he would 
rather lose his speech and hearing than go to 
church — Dr. Hodgson came to the conclusion 
that Mr. Bourne had been subject to some 
form of epilepsy, and that during his Brown 
experience he was suffering from a post- 
epileptic loss of memory. This conclusion 
found further corroboration from the fact that 
he had had several ''fainting jfits'' in the course 
of his life. But it was impossible to indicate 
the exact source of the creation of the singular 
"Brown" personality.^ 

Recalling cases such as these, and com- 
paring them with the minor disintegrations of 

^ For detailed accounts of the Reynolds case the reader is referred 
to Dr. Weir Mitchell's report in the "Transactions of the College 
of Physicians of Philadelphia," April 4, 1888; "The Principles of 
Psychology," by WiUiam James, Vol. I, pp. 381-384; or "Mary 
Reynolds," by the Rev. W. S. Plummer, an article in Harper's Maga- 
zine for May, 1860. The Bourne case is discussed at considerable 
length in the "Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research," 
Vol. VII, pp. 221-258, from which the above extract was taken. 



42 The Riddle of Personality 

trance and hypnotic phenomena, Myers also 
approached the problem of the self from the 
vantage ground afforded by the telepathic ex- 
periments and by the society's long record of 
hallucinatory visions of the dying or the dead, 
or of those in moments of crisis not neces- 
sarily fatal.^ The more he studied, the deeper 
grew his conviction that the self is both a 
unity and a coordination, and further, that it 
possesses faculties and powers unexercised and 
unexercisable by the consciousness that finds 
employment in the direction of the affairs of 
every-day life. It was in 1887 that he first 
tentatively put forth his hypothesis of the 
"'subliminal self,'' but it was not until 1903 
that his final elaboration of it was given to the 
world in the posthumously published "'Hu- 
man Personality and Its Survival of Bodily 
Death," which will prove an enduring monu- 
ment to its author's long and useful labors, 
and which, whatever opinion be formed con- 
cerning its conclusions on the evidence for 
""survival," must be accounted one of the 
generation's most searching contributions to 
the study of personality. There has been a 
vast deal of needless controversy concerning 

1 See Appendix 11. 



The Subliminal Self 43 

what Myers exactly meant by the ^^ subliminal 
self." At the outset of his magnum opus, we 
find his theory stated in language that could 
not well be more explicit: 

''The idea of a threshold {limen, Schwelle) 
of consciousness — of a level above which 
sensation or thought must rise before it can 
enter into our conscious life — is a simple and 
familiar one. The word subliminal — mean- 
ing 'beneath the threshold' — has already 
been used to define those sensations which are 
too feeble to be individually recognized. I 
propose to extend the meaning of the term, 
so as to make it cover all that takes place 
beneath the ordinary threshold, or say, if 
preferred, the ordinary margin of conscious- 
ness — not only those faint stimulations whose 
very faintness keeps them submerged, but 
much else which psychology as yet scarcely 
recognizes : sensations, thoughts, emotions, 
which may be strong, definite, and independ- 
ent, but which, by the original constitution of 
our being, seldom merge into that supra- 
liminal current of consciousness which we 
habitually identify with ourselves. Perceiving 
. . . that these submerged thoughts and emo- 
tions possess the characteristics which we 



44 The Riddle of Personality 

associate with conscious life, I feel bound to 
speak of a subliminal, or ultra-marginal, con- 
sciousness — a consciousness which we shall 
see, for instance, uttering or writing sen- 
tences quite as complex and coherent as the 
supraliminal consciousness could make them. 
Perceiving further that this conscious life be- 
neath the threshold or beyond the margin 
seems to be no discontinuous or intermittent 
thing; that not only are these isolated sub- 
liminal processes comparable with isolated 
supraliminal processes (as when a problem 
is solved by some unknown procedure in a 
dream), but that there also is a continuous 
subliminal chain of memory (or more chains 
than one) involving just that kind of in- 
dividual and persistent revival of old injpres- 
sions and response to new ones, which we 
commonly call a Self — I find it permissible 
and convenient to speak of subliminal Selves, 
or more briefly of a subliminal Self. I do not 
indeed by using this term assume that there 
are two correlative and parallel selves existing 
always within each of us. Rather I mean by 
the subliminal Self that part of the Self which 
is commonly subliminal; and I conceive that 
there may be — not only cooperations between 



The Subliminal Self 45 

these quasi-independent trains of thought — 
but also upheavals and alternations of per- 
sonality of many kinds, so that what was 
once below the surface may for a time, or 
permanently, rise above it. And I conceive 
also that no Self of which we can here have 
cognizance is in reality more than a fragment 
of a larger Self — revealed in a fashion at 
once shifting and limited through an organism 
not so framed as to afford it full manifesta- 
tion." ^ 

Here, in a paragraph, is Myers's famous 
theory of the subliminal self. Daring in con- 
ception, it was applied by him with even 
greater boldness. It was not enough to 
utilize it as an excellent working hypothesis 
to explain on a naturalistic basis phenomena 
which he and his associates in the Society for 
Psychical Research had made it impossible 
for science longer to ignore. If on the one 
hand it could be plausibly maintained by him 
that, for example, men of genius owe their 
fame to a capacity for utilizing powers which 
lie too deep below the threshold of con- 
sciousness for the ordinary man's control; 

1 "Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death," Vol. I, 
p. 14. 



46 The Riddle of Personality 

that the appeal of the hypnotist is to the sub- 
hminal not the supraliminal self, and that it is 
the subliminal self that sends and receives 
telepathic messages, he could on the other 
hand see every reason for affirming that the 
indwelling principle, unifying the subliminal 
and supraliminal, persists after the death and 
decay of the bodily organism, and that this 
indwelling principle, call it ''soul,'' ''spirit,'' 
or what one will, has been actually observed 
in operation apart from the bodily organism 
and after the destruction of that organism. 
More than this, he did not hesitate to launch 
into speculation, formulating a cosmic philos- 
ophy resting on what was to him the proved 
existence and influence of a spiritual world 
and the proved interchange of thought be- 
tween that world and the world of earth life. 
Accordingly, it is not surprising to find that 
his views and the theory out of which they 
grew have been subjected to the most caustic 
criticism ; and that there has been, as an in- 
evitable consequence of this criticism, a tend- 
ency to lose sight of the immediate benefits to 
be derived by conscientious exploration of the 
border land region invaded by this intrepid 
adventurer into the unknown. 



The Subliminal Self 47 

Undoubtedly one reason why the theory of 
the subliminal self has been received with in- 
credulity lies in the fact that it owes existence 
largely to another theory not yet generally 
accepted by the scientific world. The refer- 
ence is to telepathy. In the face of the re- 
peatedly successful experiments by independ- 
ent investigators, such as the late Thomson 
Jay Hudson, as well as by the Society for 
Psychical Research, and notwithstanding the 
great mass of well-authenticated evidence 
pointing to the operation of spontaneous 
telepathy, there is a strong disposition in 
scientific circles to deem the case for telepathy 
"'not proven.'' Nor do those scientists, the 
psychologists, who should be to the fore in 
testing the validity of the telepathic hypothe- 
sis, show any inclination as a body to prosecute 
a vigorous inquest. Here and there are to be 
found individual psychologists who, with the 
intellectual fearlessness of a William James, 
strike boldly from the primrose path of easy- 
going skepticism. But the lamentable truth 
remains that most psychologists are still so 
completely under the domination of the con- 
cepts of the ^' classical' ' school as to prefer, 
if possible, to explain away rather than in- 



48 The Riddle of Personality 

vestigate. Before them ever looms the bogy 
of ''spiritism/' and they shudder at the 
thought of being identified in the popular 
consciousness with the "psychical researchers/' 
They fail to realize that it may not be neces- 
sary to accept the supernatural implications 
that enthusiasts have read into telepathy, the 
subliminal self, and the like. They fail, too, 
to realize that unless they would see them- 
selves utterly discredited they must widen 
the range of their activities to include not 
only the lecture-room, the library, and the 
laboratory where, year after year, routine 
experiments are faithfully performed, but 
also the prison, the hospital, the asylum, 
the street; every place, in fine, where ab- 
normal man jostles normal and the multifold 
vagaries of the human mind are to be en- 
countered- 

Indeed, nothing could make clearer the 
limited point of view of the orthodox psychol- 
ogist than the criticisms he has leveled against 
the theory of the subliminal self. When the 
advocate of that theory, in deference to his 
critic's strenuous protest, discards the argu- 
ment from telepathy and advances, say, the 
argument from cases of the Bourne and Rey- 



The Subliminal Self 49 

nolds type, he is met with the contemptuous 
retort that, in all likelihood, both the changes 
in ideas and trains of thought and the changes 
in character and temperament are due alto- 
gether to physical causes, to changes in the 
supply of blood to the brain. Satisfactory as 
this reply may seem to him who makes it, he 
completely overlooks the fact that it takes no 
account of the psychical significance of the 
phenomena involved; that, in other words, 
while the problem of causation may be quite 
correctly given a physiological explanation, 
the deeper problem of why the resultant 
changes take the particular forms they mani- 
fest remains untouched. Or when the expo- 
nent of the subliminal cites as evidence of 
subliminal action the marvels accomplished by 
the so-called lightning calculators, the Dases, 
the Mangiameles, it is hardly to the point to 
plead that the peculiar gifts of the arith- 
metical prodigies are merely *' automatic. '^ 
This, however, is the favorite explanation 
of the orthodox psychologist, a figurative 
shrug of the shoulders, delightfully easy, but — 
explaining nothing. And thus every argu- 
ment in behalf of the subliminal self is met 
by denial, by evasion, or when neither denial 



50 The Riddle of Personality 

or evasion is possible, by a half-hearted 
acceptance. 

It is only fair to the psychologist to say that 
had not extremists, following the lead of 
Myers, pushed the hypothesis to unwarranted 
lengths, he might long ere this have met the 
advocate of the subliminal more than half- 
way. Thus, the latest pronouncement on the 
subject from a writer of the orthodox school 
is not merely significant as a faint-hearted, 
last-trench defense of a position even now 
untenable; it also indicates plainly the dread 
that has inspired the defenders to delay 
capitulation. "' The very latitude of the theory 
of the subliminal self,'' writes Professor Jas- 
trow, '"makes it hospitable to a wide range of 
considerations — many of them supported by 
questionable data and strained interpretations 
— and renders it liable to aflSliation with 
* occult' conceptions of every shade and grade 
of extravagance."^ Yet Professor Jastrow him- 
self is forced to the admission that, barring 
the supernatural implications of the theory, 
it closely accords with the view he entertains. 
We find him writing : 

"'It is proper to point out that in the in- 

1 "The Subconscious." By Joseph Jastrow, p. 535. 



The Subliminal Self 51 

trinsic worth and to a considerable measure 
the mutual relations assigned to the several 
groups of phenomena, the two views have a 
common interest, even common points of 
emphasis. Both find a place, though a differ- 
ent one, in the mental economv, for modes of 
achievement or for participation therein, that 
are preponderantly not of the fully conscious 
order : both recognize the disordering of mental 
impairment and the significance of variations 
in mental endowment, though with but modest 
agreement upon their interpretation; for the 
one view ever holds aloof from the super- 
natural implications of the other, and looks^ 
upon all the achievements of mind as brought 
about, not by any release of cramping limita- 
tions, but by favoring development of the 
highest natural potentialities/' ^ 

The surrender of the psychologists cannot 
be long delayed, and with their surrender 
must come a notable enlargement of our 
knowledge of the nature and capacities of 
human personality. Fortunately, practical re- 
sults of the highest order have already fol- 
lowed the discovery of the subliminal powers 
of man. To ascertain these it is necessary, 

1 " The Subconscious." By Joseph Jastrow, p. 540. 



52 The Riddle of Personality 

for the moment, to pause in our contempla- 
tion of the labors of the Society for Psychical 
Research, and, crossing the English Channel, 
set foot once more in the land where Mesmer 
won fame and fortune. 



CHAPTER III 

^'Pioneers of France in the New 
World" 

FRANCE may well be called the cradle 
of the scientific study of personality. 
It was there, as will be remembered, 
that Mesmer first drew popular attention to 
the phenomena of hypnotism, and thus raised 
doubts as to the correctness of the habitual 
view of the nature of the self; it was there that 
Bertrand discerned the great fact of sugges- 
tion underlying and animating all hypnotic 
manifestations; and if, with the researches of 
Esdaile, Elliotson, and Braid, England for 
the time assumed leadership in this field of 
research, France since Braid's day has re- 
gained and continues to hold premier place. 
It is unquestionably true that, from the the- 
oretical and philosophical standpoint, Eng- 
land is to-day in a unique position, thanks to 
the labors of Sidgwick, Myers, Gurney, and 
their associates in the Society for Psychical 

53 



54 The Riddle of Personality 

Research. But in respect to practicality, to 
the appHcation of the new knowledge to pur- 
poses immediately beneficial to mankind, 
there is no country that has achieved as much 
as France. Since, therefore, any survey of 
the subject would be incomplete without mak- 
ing clear the concrete as well as abstract gains 
effected, it is not only desirable but necessary 
to review the work of those who may with 
peculiar fitness be termed pioneers of France 
in a new world. 

A Frenchman, indeed, was the legitimate 
inheriter of the mantle of Braid. This was 
Dr. A. A. Liebeault, now famous the world 
over as the founder of psychotherapeutics, 
or the science of healing by suggestion. Lie- 
beault, who was born in 1823, began to study 
mesmerism in a desultory way as early as 
1848. But it was not until 1860, the year of 
Braid's death, that he undertook systematic 
research with a view to ascertaining its effi- 
cacy as an adjunct to medicine. A poverty- 
stricken country doctor, always hard pressed 
to earn a livelihood, he did not hesitate to 
make great sacrifices to attain his object. 
To his thriftily inclined peasant clientele he 
announced: "If you wish to be treated by 



talk 



''Pioneers of France in New World'' 55 

drugs as of old, I will so treat you, but you 
will have to pay my fees ; if, however, you allow 
me to treat you by mesmerism, I will do so 
free of charge/' In this way he secured 
many patients suffering from the most varied 
ailments, and the cures he effected brought 
him fame throughout the countryside. Soon 
he removed to the town of Nancv, where he 
based his practice entirely on mesmerism — 
or hypnotism, to use the term then being 
generally adopted — and devoted himself to 
the relief of the aflBicted poor. In his view, 
as in that of the ''school'' of which he later 
became the head, the induction of hypnosis 
and all the phenomena of hypnotism are due 
to nothing but suggestion, and the hypnotic 
trance itself is of the nature of sleep. These 
opinions he set forth in a book which he pub- 
lished in 1866, but which attracted so little 
attention that, it is said, only one copy was 
sold. The time was not yet ripe for wide 
acceptance of the marvels of hypnotism, and 
if the peasantry, rid of their ills, blessed him 
as ''the good father Liebeault," his medical 
colleagues deemed him a fanatic if not a mad- 
man. 

In fact, general appreciation of the services 



56 The Riddle of Personality 

Liebeault was rendering did not come until 
1882, when a case of sciatica of six years' 
standing was reported as having been cured 
by him. It happened that the patient had 
been treated by the celebrated Dr. Bernheim 
of the College of Nancy, and the latter, de- 
sirous of meeting the man who had succeeded 
where he had failed, paid a visit to Liebeault's 
clinic. He came as a skeptic, but what he 
saw shook his skepticism to its foundations. 
A small outer room was crowded with patients, 
victims of all manner of maladies, but singu- 
larly hopeful and cheerful, chatting together 
with a vivacity unknown in the mournful 
waiting room of the orthodox physician. In 
an inner chamber Liebeault, of unimposing 
presence but of a countenance that radiated 
kindness and strength, hypnotized each in 
turn and with wonderful rapidity. It was 
seldom that more than ten minutes elapsed 
between the entry and departure of a patient. 
*'Sit down, think of nothing, absolutely 
nothing. Look at me. There, you are going 
to sleep already, your eyes are heavy, you can- 
not open them. No, there is no use of trying. 
My voice seems distant to you. You are 
asleep, asleep, asleep. Sleep then, my friend.'' 



"Pioneers of France in New World'' 57 

Thus, with variations, ran his formula. 
Sometimes he had but to pronounce the word 
"Sleep!" and the patient was entranced. 
Then would follow curative suggestions, im- 
pressing upon the sleeper's mind the fact that 
the painful symptoms would be ameliorated 
and finally disappear, that he would be free 
from insomnia, enjoy good digestion, et cetera. 

"But do you mean,'' cried Bernheim, as 
he watched the patients come and go, "do 
you mean that by telling these people that 
they will regain health they actually regain 
it.?" 

"Not always, but often." 

"How, then, do you do it.?" 

"As yet I do not know. Come and help 
me learn." 

And Bernheim came, not once but many 
times; in the end to associate himself with 
Liebeault's labors, and to bring as coworkers 
two other scientists of wide reputation. Dr. 
Liegeois and Professor Beaunis, the first to 
study hypnotism in its legal aspects, the sec- 
ond to explore it from the physiological stand- 
point. Now Liebeault's reputation advanced 
by leaps and bounds, became national, even 
international; now the first edition of his long- 



58 The Riddle of Personality 

neglected book was speedily exhausted; and 
now savants of all countries turned their steps 
to Nancy. 

Meanwhile another Frenchman, Dr. Char- 
cot, had been working vigorously in the eflFort 
to arouse the scientific as well as the general 
public to the importance of hypnotism. Char- 
cot, however, was handicapped from the out- 
set by theories which from their very nature 
tended to retard his progress. Unlike Lie- 
beault he afiirmed that hypnosis was essen- 
tially a pathological condition akin to hysteria, 
and unlike Liebeault again he confined his 
experiments to one class of subjects, hysterical 
patients, and principally to the patients in 
the Salpetriere, the great Parisian asylum with 
which he was connected. ''There were two 
reasons for this,'' he once explained, ''first, 
because the practice of hypnotization is by 
no means free from danger to whoever may 
be subjected to it; and, secondly, because not 
infrequently we see hysteric symptoms mani- 
fest themselves at the first attempt of this 
kind, which may thus be the occasional cause 
of this neurosis. One avoids this danger, and 
consequently a heavy responsibility, by operat- 
ing, as I have ever done, only upon subjects 



''Pioneers of France in New World'' 59 

that are manifestly hysterical. The second 
reason why I have always preferred to act 
in this way ... is that hysterical subjects 
are as a rule much more sensitive than persons 
reputed to be in sound health.'' ^ 

Charcot stoutly denied that suggestion 
played any important role in hypnotism, and 
he employed purely physical means to induce 
the hypnotic state. Sometimes he would fol- 
low the Braidian method of having the patient 
gaze steadily at a small bright object; some- 
times he would substitute for protracted gaz- 
ing suddenness and intensity of impression 
by unexpectedly exposing before the patient's 
eyes a powerful electric or magnesium light, 
or by clanging a gong. "'The instrument 
being struck, the patient not expecting it, she 
is seen to become suddenly motionless, as 
though frozen where she stands, fixed in the 
gesture she may have been making when the 
gong was sounded."^ But this last method 
not infrequently brought on attacks of hys- 
teria instead of the hypnotic trance, and even 
Charcot admitted that it was "'a rather brutal 
expedient." For our present purpose it is 
not necessary to inquire into the merits of 

1 The Forum, Vol. VIII, p. 5Q6 et seq. 



60 The Riddle of Personality 

the controversy provoked by his theories and 
methods, and which is still in progress. Our 
concern is with results, and however much 
the Salpetriere school of hypnotism may be 
in error, its founder and his disciples, notably 
Pierre Janet and Alfred Binet, have in no 
small measure advanced our knowledge of 
the true nature of man. This, though, must 
be said, that had not Bernheim, Beaunis, and 
Liegeois associated themselves with Liebeault 
when they did, hypnotism must have lan- 
guished longer in disrepute, for Charcot was 
far from persuading the scientific world of its 
rationality.^ 

1 The essential points of difference between the tenets of the 
two schools were well indicated a few years ago by Dr. Babinski, a 
well-known pupil of Charcot's. Addressing the International Con- 
gress of Experimental Psychology, Dr. Babinski stated that while 
the Paris school did not deny that the hypnotic condition might be 
induced in other than hysterical patients, it insisted that they were 
pre-eminently the best subjects. And although it admitted that 
suggestion must be taken into account, it held that suggestion should 
by no means be considered the great source of hypnotic phenomena. 
If, as was characteristic, a patient unacquainted with medical facts 
and entirely ignorant of hypnotism showed, when hypnotized, the 
characteristics which belonged to the first of the three consecutive 
hypnotic stages described by Charcot, Dr. Babinski deemed it 
impossible to believe that suggestion was the cause. Why, he 
demanded, should the characteristic muscular state be contracture 
rather than paralysis, tremor, or any other symptom.? And after 
M. Bernheim had produced hypnotic sleep, as he claimed, by sug- 



"Pioneers of France in New World'' 61 

From the standpoint of personality the re- 
searches of both schools have been significant 
in two important ways — first, in proving 
the complexity and divisibility of the self, and, 
second, in focusing attention on the possi- 
bility of manipulating this complexity and 
divisibility to repair the ravages of disease in 
the bodily organism, as also to provide the 
individual with means of better adjusting 
himself, morally and intellectually, to his en- 
vironment. Almost from the first the French 
investigators were forced to recognize the 
fact that under the hypnotic influence per- 
sonality is subject to strange alterations. 
Indeed, even before they began to gain any 

gestion alone, why did he find anaesthesia, or loss of feeling, which 
he had not suggested? Dr. Babinski acknowledged that it had 
been claimed by the Nancy school that Charcot's three stages — 
the lethargic, the cataleptic, and the somnambuhc — were themselves 
the result of suggestion. But even if that were possible, which he 
denied, it would not explain their occurrence in the first cases where 
they were observed. It should be pointed out, however, that this 
able defense of the Paris school fails to meet the chief criticism, so 
finely expressed by Myers: "One feels that the Salpetriere has, in a 
sense, been smothered in its own abundance. The richest collection 
of hysterics which the world has ever seen, it has also (one fears) 
become a kind of unconscious school of these unconscious prophets 
— a milieu where the new arrival learns insensibly, from the very 
atmosphere of experiment around her, to adopt her own reflexes or 
responses to the subtly divined expectations of the operator." — 
"Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research," Vol. VI, p. 200. 



62 The Riddle of Personality 

insight into the mechanism of these altera- 
tions there was suggested to them, by the 
peculiar case of Felida X., the possibility that 
every human being is born with at least the 
germ of a secondary personality latent within 
him.^ 

Felida was a native of Bordeaux, the 
daughter of a sea captain, and until her 
thirteenth year seemed like any normal child. 
Then, however, she manifested tendencies to 
hysteria, and a little later fell periodically 

1 The great importance of this case in the development of the 
scientific study of personahty is well stated by Professor Pierre Janet 
in a recent work giving permanent form to the lectures given by him 
at the Harvard Medical School in the autumn of 1906. "Allow me," 
observes Professor Janet, "to make you acquainted with Felida. 
She is a very remarkable personage who has played a rather im- 
portant part in the history of ideas. Do not forget that this humble 
person was the educator of Taine and Ribot. Her history was the 
great argument of which the positivist psychologists made use at the 
time of the heroic struggles against the spiritualistic dogmatism of 
Cousin's school. But for Felida it is not certain that there would 
be a professorship of psychology at the College de France, and that 
I should be here, speaking to you of the mental state of hystericals. 
It is a physician of Bordeaux who has attached his name to the 
history of Felida: Azam reported this astonishing history, first at the 
Society of Surgery, then at the Academy of Medicine, in January, 
1860. He entitled his communication, *Note on Nervous Sleep or 
Hypnotism,' and spoke of this case in connection with the discussion 
of the existence of an abnormal sleep during which it would be pos- 
sible to operate without pain. And this communication, thus in- 
cidentally made, was to revolutionize psychology in fifty years." — 
"The Major Symptoms of Hysteria," pp. 78-79. 



'' Pioneers of France in New World'' 63 

and quite spontaneously into a trancelike 
condition, out of which she would emerge 
the possessor of characteristics radically dif- 
ferent from those of her normal self. Oddly 
enough, the secondary Felida was a con- 
spicuous improvement over the primary Fe- 
lida, who was of a melancholy, fretful, and 
taciturn disposition, whereas the trances left 
her buoyant, vivacious, and social. What 
was still more striking, when in the secondary 
state she had a clear memory for all the 
events of both states, but when her normal 
self knew nothing of the happenings of the 
secondary condition. Before she was fifteen 
the alterations of personality occurred so often 
that her parents called in a physician. Dr. 
Azam, of Bordeaux, who has left a graphic 
account of her mysterious history. Every 
means was tried in vain to check the recur- 
rence of her ''crises,'' but, happily, her malady 
ultimately worked its own cure. Little by 
little the secondary state gained command 
over the primary, until the latter finally ap- 
peared only at rare intervals, and the patient 
thus became a new woman in the strictest 
sense of the term. In no way did she suffer 
inconvenience save when lapsing into her 



64 The Riddle of Personality 

primary self, for each such lapse meant a loss 
of memory for the occurrences of a now 
lengthy period. ''She then/' we are told, 
^'knew nothing of the dog that played at her 
feet, or of the acquaintance of yesterday. She 
knew nothing of her household arrangements, 
her business undertakings, her social duties.'' 
Making a virtue of necessity, Felida accus- 
tomed herself, whenever she felt the premoni- 
tory symptoms of an attack, to write letters 
to her other self, giving full directions as to the 
conduct of her domestic and social aflFairs, 
and in this way she was enabled to bridge 
the gap in memory to some extent. It was in 
1858 that Dr. Azam first studied her, and 
when he last reported on her case, in 1887, 
she was married, was the happy mother of a 
family, and was constantly in the secondary 
state excepting for lapses of but a few hours' 
duration occurring only six or seven times a 
year. 

Once scientific experimentation with hys- 
terical subjects began in earnest, it was seen 
that Felida's, while an exceptional, was by no 
means an isolated case. From Paris, from 
Havre, from La Rochelle, from other parts 
of France, came reports of instances of alter- 



"Pioneers of France in New World"' 65 

nate and even multiple personality. It would 
be tedious to recite the details of these cases, 
accounts of which are accessible in numerous 
publications. But something must be said 
of at least one, remarkable both for its phe- 
nomena and the care with which it has been 
studied. Of the subject, the peasant wife of 
a charcoal burner, F. W. H. Myers could at 
one time justly write: ^^ There is perhaps no 
one in France whose personal history is 
watched with so keen an interest by such a 
group of scientific men.'' In her normal 
state Madame B. was a timid, dull, unedu- 
cated woman. When hypnotized she at once 
became bright, vivacious, quick-witted, even 
mischievous, and when cast into a still deeper 
state of hypnosis a third personality emerged, 
a personality with characteristics superior to 
those of both the others and regarding both 
with considerable disfavor. To these per- 
sonalities Professor Janet, who has observed 
the case more closely than any other inves- 
tigator, gave the names of, respectively, 
Leonie, Leontine, and Leonore. Leonie, it 
seems, knew nothing of the thoughts and 
actions of Leontine and Leonore; Leontine 
had knowledge of Leonie but none of Leonore; 



66 The Riddle of Personality 

and Leonore was cognizant of all that occurred 
in the Leonie and Leontine states. Thus 
there existed in the single individual three 
distinct personalities of which the normal, 
wake-a-day self was the least gifted. How 
sharp the line of demarcation was may clearly 
be seen from an incident reported by Pro- 
fessor Janet in the Revue Philosophique for 
March, 1888, and illustrating at once the 
cleavage between the several selves and the 
possibility of one of the latent selves appear- 
ing spontaneously, that is to say without the 
aid of hypnotism. 

"She had left Havre more than two 
months,'' writes M. Janet, "'when I received 
from her a very curious letter. On the first 
page was a short note, written in a serious and 
respectful style. She was unwell, she said, 
worse on some days than on others, and she 
signed her true name, Madame B. But over 
the page began another letter in a quite dif- 
ferent style, and which I may quote as a 
curiosity. ' My dear good sir, I must tell you 
that B. really, really makes me suffer very 
much; she cannot sleep, she spits blood, she 
hurts me. I am going to demolish her; she 
bores me. I am ill also. This is from your 



"Pioneers of France in New World'' 67 

devoted Leontine/ When Madame B. re- 
turned to Havre I naturally questioned her 
about this singular missive. She remem- 
bered the first letter very distinctly, but 
had not the slightest recollection of the 
second. I at first thought that there must 
have been an attack of spontaneous som- 
nambulism between the moment when she 
finished the first letter and the moment when 
she closed the envelope . . . But afterwards 
these unconscious, spontaneous letters be- 
came common, and I was better able to 
study their mode of production. I was for- 
tunately able to watch Madame B. on one 
occasion while she went through this curious 
performance. She was seated at a table, 
and held in her left hand the piece of knit- 
ting at which she had been working. Her 
face was calm, her eyes looked into space 
with a certain fixity, but she was not cata- 
leptic for she was humming a rustic air; her 
right hand wrote quickly and, as it were, sur- 
reptitiously. I removed the paper without 
her noticing me and then spoke to her; she 
turned round, wide awake, but surprised to 
see me, for in her state of distraction she 
had not noticed my approach. Of the let- 



68 The Riddle of Personality 

ter which she was writing she knew nothing 
whatever." ^ 

The phenomenon of "automatic writing'' 
will require attention later. For the present 
let us continue our survey of the hypnotic 
evidence emphasizing the instability and divisi- 
bility of personality. It was soon discovered 
not only that the hypnotized subject would 
assume, with almost preternatural dramatic 
fidelity, any role suggested to him by the 
operator, but that with the aid of hypnotism 
a subject might be carried back to any pre- 
vious period of his life, losing all memory of 
events subsequent to that period but regain- 
ing in most exact detail the early memories 
long forgotten by the waking self. Here, it 
was at once suggested, was a therapeutic hint 
of first-rate importance, for thus the physician 
might be able to learn both the cause and the 
nature of some obscure malady baffling his 
best powers of diagnosis. It was also found 
that, although the waking self is seemingly 
not cognizant of the events of the hypnotic 
state, any command given in the hypnotic 
state will infallibly — unless it be a command 

1 Translation by F. W. H. Myers in "Human Personality and Its 
Survival of Bodily Death," Vol. I, p. 323. 



^^ Pioneers of France in New World'' 69 

repugnant to the moral sense of the subject — 
be obeyed, even in the waking state, no matter 
what the lapse in time between the moment 
of giving the command and the moment set 
for its performance. Thus, A. hypnotizes 
B. and orders him to go to the pubHc library, 
exactly a week later, and call for a certain 
volume of poetry. B. is then awakened. 
Next week, to the hour, impelled by some 
uncontrollable impulse, he obeys A.'s com- 
mand. 

Here, however, we are brought face to face 
with a fact fully demonstrated in the opening 
years of Nancy and Salpetriere experimenta- 
tion, but too often overlooked in recent dis- 
cussion of the nature of personality. The 
very persistence of a subconscious memory for 
post-hypnotic suggestions such as that just 
described, bears out F. W. H. Myers's theory 
that personality is at once extremely complex 
and profoundly unitary. Indeed, it has been 
definitely shown that the waking self is not so 
oblivious to conditions imposed during hyp- 
nosis as circumstances would indicate. Lie- 
beault, Bernheim, Liegeois, Binet proved this 
by experiments in the hypnotic production 
of so-called negative hallucinations. For in- 



70 The Riddle of Personality 

stance, Elsie B., eighteen years old, a servant 
girl of a shy, modest disposition, was hypno- 
tized and told that upon awakening she would 
see every one in the room with the single 
exception of the operator. When she was 
aroused the latter did all in his power to 
attract her attention — even to making un- 
pleasant remarks concerning her and rudely 
handling her person — but she placidly con- 
versed with those about her and gave no sign 
of being aware of his presence. He then 
requested a colleague to rehypnotize her and 
to suggest that she would now see him. Re- 
awakened, she at once replied to his saluta- 
tion, but persisted in denying that he had 
been in the room during the preceding inter- 
val. But when, placing his hand on her 
forehead, he commanded: ''You remember 
everything, absolutely everything. Speak out! 
What did I say to you ?" she blushed deeply 
and, although with reluctance, rehearsed all 
that had taken place, insisting meanwhile 
that she "'must have dreamed it.'' 

Thus, we find the hypnotists of France, like 
the psychical researchers of England, pointing 
the way to wiser conceptions of the self; and, 
as was said above, we also find them turning 



'' Pioneers of France in New WorW^ 71 

the new knowledge to practical account in 
the betterment of the individual and the race. 
This is particularly true of the Nancy school, 
which from Liebeault's time has recognized 
the influence of suggestion on the bodily 
organism and has steadfastly employed hyp- 
notism for therapeutic rather than experi- 
mental purposes. Of course, at the outset 
of their labors the representatives of this 
school did not possess the information since 
gained of the subtle interactions between the 
physical and the psychical in the human 
body; but they saw clearly enough that in 
some mysterious way suggestions made to a 
hypnotized patient set in motion forces mighty 
to heal and upbuild. Undeniably, their en- 
thusiasm led them to indulge in extravagant 
hopes, and to much futile effort. Neverthe- 
less, the experience of years has shown an 
ever-widening sphere of usefulness for thera- 
peutic hypnotism. Among the first discov- 
eries was the fact that hypnotic suggestion 
radically affects the power of digestion, nu- 
trition, circulation, and the like; also that it 
could be utilized to strengthen the intellect 
and the will and thus be made to serve edu- 
cational and morally corrective ends. Lie- 



72 The Riddle of Personality 

beault, to cite a few examples, took in hand 
a group of weak-minded children and by 
hypnotism alone expanded their intelligence 
to a really marvelous extent. One boy, who 
was actually an idiot and deemed incapable 
of learning to read or write, he so stimulated 
that in less than three months he had mas- 
tered the alphabet and could make simple 
arithmetical calculations. In the checking 
of bad habits in children conspicuous success 
was achieved, more particularly by Dr. Be- 
rillon, who was perhaps the first systematically 
to apply the hypnotic method to education. 
Similarly, adults were cured of alcoholism, 
excessive smoking, and kindred vices. This 
last use of hypnotism, as is well known, has 
since secured wide application, and with the 
most encouraging results.^ 

With the passage of time, too, it was realized 
that if, from the therapeutic standpoint, 
hypnotism were unavailing in the treatment 
of most physical ills, it might be utilized to 
alleviate the pain accompanying such ills, 
and in some cases to effect cures indirectly; 
and was of positive curative value in connec- 
tion w4th all maladies having a psychical 

1 See Appendix III. 



^'Pioneers of France in New World'' 73 

basis, unless these maladies had progressed 
from the functional to the organic stage. 
Just what this means to mankind may best 
be shown by citing illustrative cases, some 
taken from the earlier and some from recent 
records of French hypnotic practice. Men- 
tion has been made of Liebeault's sciatica 
cure which was the means of interesting 
Bernheim in hypnotism. Here, as in similar 
cures of neuralgia, rheumatism, inflammation, 
etc., the important element in effecting the 
cure was most likely the removal of pain by 
hypnotic suggestion, nature thus being en- 
abled to vindicate herself more readily. For 
this reason, moreover, the use of hypnotism 
may well be recommended to lessen the 
sufferings of those attacked by painful in- 
curable diseases, such as cancer; and by some 
it is even claimed that a painless death may 
be assured by impressing upon the dying the 
suggestion that they shall feel no pain. In 
this connection it is interesting to recall a 
case in which death itself would seem to have 
been met face to face and conquered by 
hypnotism. I quote from the abridged account 
given by Myers: 

"From the age of thirteen the patient, 



74 The Riddle of Personality 

Marceline R., had been subject to a miser- 
able series of hysterical troubles — chorea, 
crises, anaesthesia, et cetera. In January, 
1886, the hysterical tendency took its most 
serious form — of insuperable vomiting, which 
became so bad that the very sight of a spoon- 
ful of soup produced distressing spasms. 
Artificial means of feeding were tried, with 
diminishing success, and in June, 1887, she 
was paralytic and so emaciated that (in spite 
of the rarity of deaths from any form of 
hysteria) her death from exhaustion appeared 
imminent. 

"'M. Janet [Jules Janet, the brother of 
Prof. Pierre Janet] was then asked to hypno- 
tize her. Almost at once he succeeded in in- 
ducing a somnambulic state in which she 
could eat readily and digest well. Her weight 
increased rapidly, and there was no longer 
any anxiety as to a fatal result. But the 
grave inconvenience remained that she could 
eat only when hypnotized. M. Janet tried 
to overcome this difiiculty; for a time he suc- 
ceeded; and she left the hospital for a few 
months. She soon, however, returned in her 
old state of starvation. M. Janet now changed 
his tactics. Instead of trying to enable her 



"Pioneers of France in New World'' 75 

to eat in her first or so-called normal state, 
he resolved to try to enable her to live com- 
fortably in her secondary state. In this he 
gradually succeeded, and sent her out in 
October, 1888, established in her new per- 
sonality. . . . When he took me to see her 
. . . she had been in the hypnotic state con- 
tinuously for three months and ten days, 
during which time she had successfully passed 
a written examination for the office of hospi- 
tal nurse, which she had failed to pass in her 
normal state.'' ^ 

In this instance we see hypnotism benefit- 
ing the subject both physically and mentally. 
Unquestionably, of course, mental malady 
lay at the root of Marceline's affliction, and 
it is precisely in the treatment of such disor- 
ders that hypnotism is most successful. Fre- 
quently, as recent research is making very 
evident, physical ills are but the outward 
manifestation of some deep-seated psychical 
disturbance, and whenever this is the case, 
resort may be had to hypnotism with con- 
siderable expectation of a cure. To illustrate: 
There was once brought to Pierre Janet a 

1 " Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death," Vol I., 
p. 331. 



76 The Riddle of Personality 

young woman suffering from periodical and 
prolonged attacks of hysteria, violent head- 
aches, and total loss of the sense of contact 
and of the sense of pain. She could not walk, 
she felt no injury however severe. By hyp- 
notism alone this unfortunate was restored 
to her family in complete health, her hysteria 
and her headaches gone, her sensibility nor- 
mal. Another patient was the victim of a 
persistent hemorrhage of the eyes, no physical 
cause for which could be found. Hypnotism 
checked this when all else failed.^ 

As in the cure of hysteria so does hypnotism 
find a wide field of usefulness in the removal 
of hallucinations and those phobies, or irra- 
tional fears, which so often end in the com- 
mitment of the victim to an asylum, or in his 
despairing death by suicide. Few people are 
aware of the extent and variety of this form 
of mental disease. There is, in truth, no 
predicting the strange obsessions that may 
invade the human mind, haunting it with 
vampire-like insistence. One man, terrified 
by he knows not what, may find himself un- 
able to cross an open space; another be 
afraid to venture outdoors alone; another to 

^ See the Revue de VHypnotisme for February, 1892, p. 251. 



''Pioneers of France in New World'' 77 

sit in a room with closed doors; another may 
feel that everyone he meets is eying and criti- 
cising him; another asserts that he is made 
of glass and must exercise the greatest care 
to prevent himself being smashed to frag- 
ments. Such fears would be ludicrous were 
they not so tragic. Particularly pathetic is 
a case that came to Professor Janet's notice 
some years ago. Madame P., a dyspeptic, 
had been put on a diet of toast and water, and, 
rebelling, was wont to indulge in secret in 
coffee and rolls. These she found did her 
little harm, and gradually the habit grew 
upon her until finally she passed her entire 
time wandering from one Parisian restaurant 
to another, drinking from twenty to thirty 
cups of coffee a day and consuming incredible 
quantities of rolls. At night, if she chanced 
to wake and could find no coffee and rolls in 
the house, she would pace her room in feverish 
anxiety until the restaurants opened in the 
morning. Somewhat similar is a case re- 
ported a few months ago by the same au- 
thority: 

"Here is a young woman. Que, twenty-six 
years of age; in coming to see us she brings 
with her a large bag, and her pockets are filled 



78 The Riddle of Personality 

to overflowing. What is she bringing with 
her in coming to us for a consultation ? It is 
simply provisions for the journey. She has 
in her bag and in her pockets several pieces 
of bread, a few slices of ham, some chocolate 
tablets, and some sugar. One would say 
that she was going to cross a desert, when it is 
simply a question of crossing a few streets. 
The provisions are indispensable to her, for, 
especially in the open air and in squares, it is 
absolutely necessary that she should take 
something to strengthen her. At the end of 
several steps she feels dazed, becomes dizzy, 
chokes, and is covered with cold sweats. The 
danger would be great if she did not know 
the remedy. All she needs is to strengthen 
herself. She eats a piece of ham, puts a piece 
of sugar in her mouth, and is thus able to take 
a few more steps. But very soon it all begins 
again, and it is only with the aid of rolls and 
chocolates that she is able to cross a square. 
One can, therefore, understand her miserable 
plight when her provisions run short. She is 
obliged at all costs, with unheard-of efforts, 
to cross the desert to reach an oasis — that is, 
a bakery. During this terrible journey she 
gets along as best she can. What do unfor- 



"Pioneers of France in New World'' 79 

tunate travelers not eat ? She may pick up a 
raw potato, capture an onion, or a few green 
leaves; this hardly sustains her, but gives her 
enough strength to reach a bakery. In gen- 
eral, she prefers to remain at home; that is 
less dangerous, and so she does nothing else 
but prepare and eat food all day long." ^ 

For such unfortunates there is little hope 
unless they place themselves under the care 
of the skilled psychopathologist, the savant 
accustomed to explore the vagaries of the 
mind and able to touch the hidden springs of 
thought and feeling and action. Then and 
only then will the evil spirits of obsession be 
exorcised, and the stricken mind find itself 
once more in harmony with its environment. 
Whence the secret of the cure.^ As yet none 
can say with certitude. But, as we are now 
about to learn, the key to unlock this mystery 
would at last seem to be fairly in the hands 
of science. 

1 The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. I, No. 1, p. 3. 



CHAPTER IV 

American Explorers of the Subconscious 

AFTER what has been said of the de- 
velopment of hypnotism as a thera- 
peutic agency, it will be evident that 
its widest sphere of usefulness is in the treat- 
ment of nervous and mental disease. This 
constitutes a fact of the highest social sig- 
nificance. Under the stress of modern civi- 
lization, and more particularly in countries 
of great economic activity, neurasthenia, hys- 
teria, and kindred disorders have increased 
with appalling rapidity. Convincing proof 
of this is furnished by the recently published 
statistics of the United States Census Bureau 
relating to insanity, that dread culmination 
of nervous and mental breakdown. These 
we may well contemplate for a moment, in 
order to bring clearly before our mind's eye 
the ravages of insanity and the necessity for 
utilizing all the means at our command to 
combat it. The figures to be quoted refer 
usually to the year 1903, and in most cases 

80 



American Explorers of the Subconscious 81 

only to the insane confined in public and 
private asylums. 

It appears, then, that as regards the coun- 
tries of the European continent, the minimum 
is found in Hungary with a total of 2,716 in- 
sane, or 14.1 per 100,000 of population, and 
the maximum is reached in Switzerland with 
a total of 7,434 insane, or 224.2 per 100,000. 
Germany has 108,004 insane, or 191.6; France, 
69,190, or 177.5, and Italy, 34,802, or 109.2. 
In the British Empire the ratios are far 
higher: Ireland, 22,138, or 490.9; Scotland, 
16,658, or 363.7; England and Wales, 113,964, 
or 340.1, and Canada, 12,819, or 238.6. 
Turning to the United States we find a total 
of no fewer than 150,151 insane, and while 
this is a ratio of only 186.2 per 100,000 of 
population, there is good reason to suspect 
that insanity is increasing in the United States 
more rapidly than in any other country. In 
any event, it is increasing so rapidly as to 
assume the aspect of an urgent social problem 
which must be solved if the best interests of 
the nation are to be conserved. 

Investigation shows that though the present 
ratio of 186.2 per 100,000 refers only to the 
insane immured in asylums, it exceeds by 



82 The Riddle of Personality 

16.2 the ratio of 1890 for all the insane in the 
United States, whether in or out of asylums, 
and exceeds by 68.0 the ratio of the same 
year for the asylum insane. Doubtless, as 
has been suggested, the increase is in part 
attributable to kinder and more rational 
methods of treatment whereby the lives of 
the insane are prolonged. But this can ex- 
plain only a small part of the increase, when 
the fact is borne in mind that during the 
decade 1880-1890 the population of Ameri- 
can asylums increased from 40,942 to 74,028, 
and by 1903 had leaped to 150,151, or more 
than double the total for 1890. Obviously, 
the census officials have warrant for their 
belief that in the United States the growth of 
insanity is outdistancing that of the popula- 
tion; and consequently there is good ground 
for the assertion that the lesser mental ills are 
increasing with even greater rapidity. The 
need of a remedy is plainly urged both by 
humanitarian and economic considerations. 
The maintenance bill for American asylums 
already amounts to more than $20,000,000 
annually, over ninety per cent of the insane 
in the United States being wholly or partially 
dependent on public support. And no nation 



American Explorers of the Subconscious 83 

thus constantly and increasingly weakened 
may hope to retain political, industrial, or 
commercial headship. 

Under such circumstances, and in view of 
the enterprising spirit of the American people, 
it would naturally be thought that they would 
be among the first to seize, develop, and 
utilize the results of the new science of psy- 
chopathology. But the contrary has been the 
case, and to such a degree that, as concerns 
the investigation of mental vagaries, America 
to-day lags far behind France, Germany, 
Holland, Italy, and other countries of the Old 
World. She has no institution similar to the 
Salpetriere; the psychopathic laboratories and 
clinics so numerous in Europe are practically 
unknown within her borders. For this con- 
dition of affairs there have been several 
causes, into which it is not necessary to enter. 
Far more important and agreeable is it to be 
able to record that a new era is dawning, and 
that the time seems near when, in point both 
of theoretical and practical achievement in 
psychopathological research, the United States 
will be outranked by no other country, not 
even by France. When this time shall have 
arrived, the names of a little group of pioneers 



84 The Riddle of Personality 

will be held in grateful and enduring remem- 
brance. 

Foremost among these are Boris Sidis and 
Morton Prince. Years ago Dr. Prince, who 
is a Boston physician of international repu- 
tation as a specialist in nervous and mental 
disease, became persuaded that the labors of 
Charcot, Liebeault, Bernheim, and Janet had 
yielded truths of great moment to both the 
psychologist and the physician, and it is safe 
to say that no one has done more than he to 
overcome the overt and covert opposition of 
the American scientific world to the employ- 
ment of suggestion as a curative and experi- 
mental -agent. Recognizing, as few of his 
colaborers have recognized, the need of tak- 
ing psychotherapeutics out of the control of 
''wonder workers,'' and of placing it on a 
strictly scientific basis, he has largely devoted 
his energies to experimentation and observa- 
tion, and (especially since the launching of 
his periodical, the Journal of Abnormal Psy- 
chology) to the task of giving publicity to the 
discoveries of such savants as Janet and 
Bernheim, and in this way furthering knowl- 
edge of the progress achieved and of the 
problems still baffling the psychopathologists. 



American Explorers of the Subconscious 85 

But he is also a practitioner and has to his 
credit many cures; notably the much-dis- 
cussed ''Miss Beauchamp" case of multiple 
personality. 

The facts in this case, as reported by Dr. 
Prince himself, are as follows: In the spring 
of 1898 there was brought to him a young 
woman twenty-three years old, a student in a 
New England College, and a ''neurasthenic" 
of an extreme type, suffering from headaches, 
insomnia, bodily pains, and persistent fatigue. 
The customary methods of treatment having 
failed to afford relief. Dr. Prince resorted to 
hypnotism, and the young woman whose 
identity has been veiled by the pseudonym 
"Christine L. Beauchamp,'' seemed to be on 
the highroad to recovery, when there suddenly 
developed in her, in the hypnotic trance, an 
apparently secondary personality. This was 
utterly alien from the normal Miss Beau- 
champ, who was dignified and reserved, 
whereas the newcomer, if the term be per- 
missible, manifested a gay, mischievous, fun- 
loving, talkative disposition. Moreover, she 
absolutely denied identity with Miss Beau- 
champ, while claiming and revealing knowl- 
edge of her most secret thoughts and feelings. 



86 The Riddle of Personality 

At first Dr. Prince suspected deception, 
but, try as he might, he could not trap the new 
personaHty into statements that would con- 
firm this suspicion. Finally, a day came when 
''Sally,'' as the secondary being called herself, 
succeeded in asserting her individuahty while 
Miss Beauchamp was in the waking, not the 
hypnotic state; and thereafter became not 
merely a ''subconscious'' but also an "alter- 
nating" personality, replacing the primary 
personality at frequent intervals and during 
these intervals so behaving as to cause her 
other self much trouble, embarrassment, and 
even suffering. Soon the conviction took 
root in Miss Beauchamp's mind that she was 
literally possessed of a demon. The periods 
when "Sally" was in control were described 
by Miss Beauchamp as trances ; but sometimes 
in her waking moments "Sally" impelled her 
to do much against her will. 

The two personalities were, in fact, of radi- 
cally different traits and inclinations. Miss 
Beauchamp, who was in straitened circum- 
stances financially, was by nature cautious 
and thrifty. "Sally" frittered away her care- 
fully hoarded earnings. Miss Beauchamp was 
deeply religious and guarded in her actions. 



American Explorers of the Subconscious 87 

''Sally'' was irreligious, coquettish, and ad- 
dicted to smoking cigarettes. Miss Beau- 
champ wearied easily. ''Sally'' never felt 
tired, and would frequently take her other 
self, all unconsciously, on long walks, allowing 
Miss Beauchamp to awake from the trance 
state in some distant suburb, penniless and 
worn out. For a time, Dr. Prince gave her 
some relief by hypnotizing "Sally" into 
quiescence, but before long "Sally" became 
unmanageable even with the aid of hypnotism. 
She had her good qualities, however. Once, 
according to Dr. Prince, when Miss Beau- 
champ despairingly gave up the struggle and 
essayed suicide by gas, "Sally" assumed con- 
trol, turned off the gas, and opened the win- 
dow. But the situation seemed hopeless, and 
Miss Beauchamp marked for the insane 
asylum. 

Then, suddenly and spontaneously, a new 
personality appeared, a personality remem- 
bering nothing that had occurred in Miss 
Beauchamp's life since 1893, but with a full 
knowledge of the events in her earlier career. 
Unlike "Sally," this personality was well 
developed mentally, and unlike Miss Beau- 
champ was strong-willed, stubborn, and some- 



88 The Riddle of Personality 

what deceitful. Making inquiry. Dr. Prince 
learned that in 1893 Miss Beauchamp had 
experienced a severe shock, and that her ills 
had dated from that time. At once the 
thought occurred to him: Is this new per- 
sonality the real Miss Beauchamp, and is the 
Miss Beauchamp I have known, like'' Sally'' 
herself, nothing more than a secondary per- 
sonality.^ But before he could answer this 
inevitable query a new phase developed, 
"Sally'' and the latest personality entering 
upon a life-and-death struggle for possession 
of Miss Beauchamp 's bodily faculties. 

Dr. Prince realized that he must act, and 
act quickly. But the problem was how to 
act. Only one personality could be left in 
"'control," and which should it be.^ Which, 
in other words, was the real Miss Beauchamp ? 
What if none of the three were the real Miss 
Beauchamp.^ Such were the questions that 
hurled themselves at the perplexed physician. 
Then, quite unexpectedly, he made the dis- 
covery that, under hypnotism, the primary 
personality and the latest personality became 
identical. Here, it seemed to him, was the 
correct solution — a fusion of both personali- 
ties into a single, well-rounded whole. But, 



American Explorers of the Subconscious 89 

brought out of the hypnotic state, disintegra- 
tion immediately took place, either the pri- 
mary or the latest personality "controlling" the 
unhappy organism. Once there was no dis- 
integration, but then the patient acted as one 
demented. Not until many months later, 
and full seven years from the time the case 
had first come under his observation, did Dr. 
Prince find that he had actually hit upon the 
proper method of procedure, but had been 
baffled by the cunning of ''Sally,'' who had 
compelled the disintegration and the dementia 
because she feared that, fusion accomplished, 
her own existence would be terminated. Then 
it did indeed come to an end, and ever since 
Miss Beauchamp, a normal, healthy woman, 
has led a life of tranquil happiness.^ 

Equally impressive, as testifying to the 
value to the new methods of treating mental 
alienation, is the work of Boris Sidis, the 
Janet of the United States. And first a few 
words as to Dr. Sidis's career, in itself most 
interesting. Of Russian birth, he came to 
this country when still extremely young, 
and entered Harvard. It was not long be- 

1 For the detailed account of this strange tale from real life, con- 
sult Dr. Prince's " The Dissociation of a PersonaHty." 



90 The Riddle of Personality 

fore his industry, his alertness, and, above 
all, his originality, attracted the attention of 
Professor James, who conceived a hearty 
admiration for the young Russian and prophe- 
sied that he would be heard from after leaving 
Harvard. This prophecy was speedily ful- 
filled with the publication of his ''The Psy- 
chology of Suggestion,'' which made it 
evident that a remarkably gifted investigator 
and thinker had entered the scientific field. 
About this time, too, opportunity knocked at 
Dr. Sidis's door in most unexpected fashion. 
Acting on the recommendation of Dr. Carlos 
F. MacDonald, president of the State Lunacy 
Commission, the New York Legislature had 
created a novel department of governmental 
activity, a "^^ pathological institute.'' This was 
intended to be, so to speak, an educational 
annex to the State hospital system, its chief 
legal raison d'etre being that it might ''pro- 
vide instruction in brain pathology and other 
subjects for the medical oflBcers of the State 
hospitals." But, as luck would have it, a 
progressive and liberal-minded physician. Dr. 
Ira van Gieson, was appointed director, and 
the institute speedily developed into some- 
thing more than a mere hospital appanage. 



American Explorers of the Subconscious 91 

Dr. van Gieson, who deserves to be ranked 
among American pathfinders of the subcon- 
scious, saw clearly that as then constituted 
psychiatry (the study of insanity) was in a 
dismal slough of despond and could make 
little progress until the problems of insanity 
were approached from other than the purely 
medical standpoint. To this end he gathered 
about him a staff of specialists in allied sci- 
ences, and as associate in psychology and 
psychopathology he selected Dr. Sidis. It 
was in 1896 that the institute began work in 
earnest, and by 1899 Dr. van Gieson could 
report to the State Commission that "'much 
material has been accumulated by the director 
and his associates, and many scientific gen- 
eralizations of theoretical and practical im- 
portance have been worked out.'' Among 
these generalizations was Dr. Sidis's now 
famous ''law of dissociation" which has 
thrown a flood of light on the mechanism 
both of insanity and of suggestion, and which 
we shall presently survey in brief. 

But if Dr. van Gieson might justly feel 
proud of the results obtained in so short a 
time, it was none the less certain that the 
commission was dissatisfied with his conduct 



92 The Riddle of Personality 

of the institute. Criticism hinged on the fact 
that he was subordinating the educational 
to the experimental phase, and he was urged 
to pay more attention to the work of instruct- 
ing the asylum physicians. In vain he pro- 
tested that "the main function of the institute 
is the investigation of the principles and laws 
of abnormal mental life.'' He was reminded 
that the act creating the institute contem- 
plated other objects. A bitter controversy 
developed, and in the end he and his asso- 
ciates were swept from oflfice with their work 
unfinished, and the institute was reorganized 
on a "^practical" basis. For a time the little 
band of investigators found refuge in a pri- 
vate laboratory, but ere long lack of funds 
caused their dispersal, Dr. Sidis removing to 
Brookline, Mass., where he has since con- 
tinued his therapeutic and experimental work, 
now independently, now in cooperation with 
Dr. Prince and others, to no small extent cen- 
tering his efforts on the elaboration of the law 
of dissociation. 

This law or principle is connected with a 
novel conception in biology — the much- 
debated theory of neuron motility, itself a 
product of recent investigation. According to 



American Explorers of the Subconscious 93 

it the neuron (that is to say, the nerve cell and 
its prolongations) is held to be an anatomical 
unity, possessing the power of independent 
movement and securing concerted functional 
activity with other neurons by means of a 
connection simply of contact. Having regard 
to this theory — and appreciating the ease with 
which, under such conditions, contact might be 
broken, neuron energy interfered with, and 
the detached neurons either be utterly de- 
stroyed or form themselves into new clusters 
— it seemed possible to Dr. Sidis to view 
mental disorders as the accompanying psychi- 
cal manifestations of neuron disaggregation. 
For example, the individual. A, suffers from 
a severe illness, a blow, a mental shock, and 
subsequently exhibits, it may be loss of 
memory, it may be a proneness to hallucina- 
tions, it may be even a completely changed 
personality. Dr. Sidis would explain all such 
phenomena on the ground that the initial 
trouble, whatever its nature, whether physical 
or psychical, had brought about a neuron 
disturbance with accompanying ''dissociation'' 
of consciousness. More than this, he would 
apply the law of dissociation to explain sundry 
physical disorders (as certain headaches, 



94 The Riddle of Personality 

hystero-epilepsy, etc.) on the assumption that 
in such cases the physical phenomena, the 
headaches, the fits, were the external indica- 
tions of a deep-seated psychical malady. In 
either instance a cure is deemed possible, 
once it is ascertained that the dissociation 
has not proceeded so far as to involve destruc- 
tion of the nerve cell. At firsts of course, the 
law of dissociation was utilized by Dr. Sidis 
as a working hypothesis merely; to-day, how- 
ever, it has been, in his opinion and in the 
opinion of many other investigators, so firmly 
established that its validity is no longer de- 
pendent on the validity of the neuron theory, 
which, I may add, is still regarded by most 
scientists as lacking adequate demonstration. 
The operation and significance of this law 
may be made plain by a review of a few of 
the human problems that have been worked 
out by Dr. Sidis; problems, moreover, of 
direct bearing on our present inquiry into the 
nature of human personality. Let us begin 
with the case of D. F., a young girl treated 
by Dr. Sidis in cooperation with another 
really scientific American psychopathologist. 
Dr. William A. White, now superintendent of 
the Government hospital for the insane at 



American Explorers of the Subconscious 95 

Washington, but then (1897) connected with 
the State hospital at Binghamton, N. Y. It 
was there that D. F. came under observation, 
having been committed as insane when only 
thirteen years of age. Until this time, it 
appears, nothing abnormal had been noticed 
in her conduct, and the circumstances attend- 
ing the onset of the attack were such that Drs. 
Sidis and White immediately suspected that 
she might be a victim not of insanity but dis- 
sociation. To determine the verity of their 
suspicion they subjected her to some curious 
tests. Psychopathological examination had re- 
vealed the fact that there was a decided con- 
traction of her field of vision, and that many 
parts of her body were insensible to pain or 
sensation of any kind. With this knowledge, 
objects were introduced midway between her 
field and the normal field of vision and she 
was asked to guess their nature; the non- 
sensitive parts were pricked with a pin and 
she was asked to guess the number of pricks. 
Almost invariably her guess was correct, and 
this satisfied the investigators that she had 
a subconscious perception of the test stimuli. 
What this meant was that they had before 
them a clear case of dissociation, and that 



96 The Riddle of Personality 

dissociation had not progressed from the 
functional to the fatal organic stage. Hyp- 
notic experiments confirmed this view, and 
the attempt was now made to raise the fugi- 
tive, subconscious perceptions above the 
threshold of consciousness, and thus obtain 
a complete reassociation. D. F. was hyp- 
notized and the suggestion was made to her 
that she should pass from the hypnotic into a 
state of normal sleep. While in this state of 
normal sleep pencil and paper were given her 
and she wrote, from Dr. Sidis's dictation, a 
letter in which she informed her mother that 
she was determined "to try not to be sick 
any more." As the technical report on her 
case says: 

"It was the awakening of the patient's 
spontaneous energy coming from the depths 
of her own being. That this energy was really 
awakened and the synthesis voluntarily formed 
by the spontaneous activity of the patient her- 
self, are well shown in the interesting and 
highly suggestive lines which she herself 
volunteered after the letter was finished, as if 
to emphasize distinctly that what she had 
just written by dictation was not a matter of a 
passively accepted suggestion, but of a spon- 



American Explorers of the Subconscious 97 

taneous, voluntary, active, energetic resolu- 
tion. The resolution was especially well seen 
in the way she wrote it. The pencil was 
firmly grasped in the hand, and she wrote 
quickly and with determination the following 
sentence: '/ mean what I have just written^' 
and signed her name.''^ 

Later she was again hypnotized, and in 
order to re-enforce her resolution and complete 
the synthesis of the dissociated states it was 
suggested to her that her eyesight would be 
^'as good as anyone's," that sensation would 
be restored to her, and that she would recol- 
lect everything that had transpired in the 
natural sleep. Astounding as it may seem, 
the results suggested actually followed. *'The 
field of vision,'' we read, ^' taken immediately 
after attempts to run the dissociated systems 
into one, was markedly enlarged. The field 
of vision kept on expanding." Similarly, the 
non-sensitive parts recovered sensation, and 
she regained a sound memory. But what was 
most important of all, D. F. became what she 
had originally been — a quiet, modest, normal 
girl, rescued from the asylum to develop into a 
useful member of society. "" Since the dis- 

1 "Psychopathological Researches." By Boris Sidis, p. 93. 



98 The Riddle of Personality 

charge from the hospital she had had no re- 
turn of any of the symptoms which led to her 
committal. The patient's mental condition 
remains normal, and there has been no recur- 
rence for the period of five years of the con- 
traction of the field of vision/'* 

In this case the immediate cause of dissocia- 
tion does not seem to have been ascertained, 
but it was speedily learned in another, and 
in its way more difiicult, case recorded by 
Dr. Sidis. J. F., a Russian Jew, intelligent, 
of good physique and temperate habits, had 
occasion in 1900 to consult a physician for 
some slight abdominal trouble, and was jok- 
ingly told that he had *' lumps" in his stomach. 
The temporary suggestibility of the patient 
was such that this statement formed the 
nucleus of a highly systematized delusion. 
Into his mind came the idea that a vast 
quantity of waste materials had accumulated 
in his intestines in the shape of lumps, and 
presently he imagined that the lumps were 
constantly shifting in position, passing and 
repassing between different organs of his 
body. Soon more bizarre conceptions took 
possession of him. He "believed he had 

1 "Psychopathological Researches." By Boris Sidis, p. 102. 



American Explorers of the Subconscious 99 

worms in his intestines; it was these worms 
working on the great amount of lumps that 
broke the big hard lumps and ate them; at 
the same time, being stupid and careless, they 
sprinkled tiny lumps all about them. In 
this process of sprinkling, due to the careless 
mode of 'feasting,' the worms themselves be- 
came besprinkled with tiny lumps and were 
very uncomfortable, but they could not free 
themselves from the lumps which stuck fast 
to their slimy, sticky bodies. . . . Fortunately 
for himself as well as for the worms, three 
agencies came to the rescue of this intolerable 
state of affairs — the spleen, the soul, and the 
veins. . . . The spleen and the soul were the 
two active agents in this purifying process. 
The soul was the scavenger and the spleen 
the director. ... A whole system of signs was 
established between . . . the soul and the 
spleen, signs which the patient could hear 
distinctly. He would hear the spleen grunt 
in reply to the signals given to it in a sort of 
deaf and mute fashion by the ever-working, 
never- tiring soul. The spleen would grunt 
when the soul worked well, but its grunt did 
not resemble that of man,''^ and so on, ad 

* "Psychopathological Researches." By Boris Sidis, pp. 160-163. 

LOFC 



100 The Riddle of Personality 

infinitum. Manifestly, here was a man who 
ordinarily would have ended his days in the 
madhouse. And, in fact, he proved a most 
troublesome patient, his delusions persisting 
even when he was put into deep hypnosis. 
But Dr. Sidis did not despair, and by a long 
course of hypnotic treatment gradually suc- 
ceeded in suggesting the imaginary lumps 
away, through impressing on the patient's 
subconsciousness the idea that the delusion 
was a past experience. 

Under hypnosis, it is worth noting, J. F. 
manifested a personality quite distinct from 
that of his waking self. In this respect his 
case was similar to that of another of Dr. 
Sidis's patients, Mr. R., a business man of 
phlegmatic temperament who was unaccount- 
ably afflicted by a trembling of the hands so 
pronounced as to prevent his carrying a glass 
of water to his mouth. For eight years this 
malady had slowly grown worse, until he 
finally consulted Dr. Sidis in much the spirit 
of the drowning man who clutches at the 
proverbial straw. Hypnotizing him. Dr. Sidis 
discovered that the Mr. R. of the hypnotic 
state was a vastly different person from the 
Mr. R. of every-day life. "" We no longer have 



American Explorers of the Subconscious 101 

before us a business man of fifty. We see 
before us a childlike soul, displaying a most 
intense human emotion. . . . All business is 
completely forgotten; not a mention is made 
of money.'' ^ No time was lost in demanding 
of the hypnotized Mr. R.: ''Can you tell us 
the exact conditions and the time when you 
first perceived the tremor in your hands .^" 
''Yes; it was on the day my wife died." "Do 
you have any dreams.^" "Yes." "What 
are they.^" And now followed a long series 
of dreams, all relating to the dead wife and 
revealing the existence of a constant sub- 
conscious yearning and sorrow for the lost 
companion of his earlier years. Here, clearly, 
was a secondary self of more attractive 
characteristics than the waking self of the 
cold, calculating man of affairs. But it was 
a dissociated self, influencing adversely the 
physical well-being of the waking self. Dr. 
Sidis's duty was plain, and the means of per- 
forming it in his power. A few treatments 
and Mr. R.'s hands had ceased to tremble. 
More impressive than any of the foregoing, 
and indeed unique in the annals of psycho- 

1 Multiple Personality." By Boris Sidis and Simon P. Goodhart, 
p. 318. 



102 The Riddle of Personality 

pathology, is the strange case of the Rev, 
Thomas C, Hanna* Like the case of Miss 
Christine L. Beauchamp, this has aheady 
received considerable pubHcity, but it is neces- 
sary that at least an outline of it be given 
here, while readers desiring the details may 
consult Dr. Sidis's ''Multiple Personality.'' 
To be brief, Mr. Hanna, in the spring of 1897, 
was plunged into a state of complete amnesia 
as the result of a fall from a carriage. He 
lost all sense of identity, forgot the events of 
his past life, had no sign of recognition for 
relatives and friends. More, he had to be 
taught to read, to write, even to talk and walk 
and eat. It was at first thought that his future 
home would have to be in an asylum, but as 
time progressed and he displayed the posses- 
sion of a keen, vigorous, intelligent personality, 
his case was referred to Drs. Sidis and Good- 
hart in the hope that they might succeed in 
recovering the lost contents of his conscious- 
ness. Their immediate concern was to learn 
whether any memory of events antedating 
the accident persisted in a subconscious, dis- 
sociated state. As has been seen, resort is 
usually had to hypnotism for this purpose, 
but it was found impossible to hypnotize Mr. 



American Explorers of the Subconscious 103 

Hanna. However, the employment of a 
method known as hypnoidization finally 
yielded results. 

We must dwell for a moment on hypnoidi- 
zation since it involves one of the most re- 
markable discoveries made by the modern 
students of the self. It is based on the theory 
that if the waking consciousness be subjected 
to a monotonous stimulus the contents of the 
subconsciousness will rise above the threshold. 
It is applied in different ways. Sometimes 
the patient is simply requested to close his 
eyes, keep as quiet as possible, and then re- 
late the thoughts that flit through his mind. 
Sometimes he is given pencil and paper and 
asked to set down in writing whatever thoughts 
may occur to him while listening to another 
person reading, or playing on the piano. 
Childish as this process sounds, it often brings 
to the surface ideas submerged beneath the 
threshold of consciousness and essential to the 
knowledge and treatment of the case.^ 

So far as concerns Mr. Hanna, hypnoidi- 
zation convinced Drs. Sidis and Goodhart 
that the lost memories survived, and the 
effort was now made to bring them perma- 

1 See Appendix IV. 



104 The Riddle of Personality 

nently into the field of waking consciousness. 
The experiment was tried of conducting the 
patient to theaters, saloons, and other places 
of entertainment to which, in his normal state, 
he would not think of resorting. It was 
hoped that there might result a reintegrating, 
reassociating shock, and this hope was actu- 
ally realized. One night there developed a 
spontaneous but brief recurrence of the orig- 
inal personality. The experimenters perse- 
vered, and soon witnessed the phenomenon 
of alternating personality. One moment the 
patient would be the Mr. Hanna of old, the 
next the secondary Mr. Hanna. He was 
ceaselessly urged to try to remember in each 
personality, the thoughts, feelings, actions of 
the other. Memory was to be the bridge 
across the chasm separating the two person- 
alities. Ultimately, complete fusion was 
effected and the clergyman restored to his 
family a normal, healthy man. This was 
some years ago, and as up to the present 
(September, 1907) there has been no relapse, 
a lasting cure has apparently been obtained. 
What results from the scrutiny of such 
cases as these ? For one thing, or so it seems 
to me, the knowledge that an unfailing in- 



American Explorers of the Subconscious 105 

strument is available to readjust the mental 
equilibrium of the individual and the race 
tottering under the strain and hurry of mod- 
ern conditions of life. The psychopatholo- 
gists, it is true, confess that they are helpless 
in the presence of actual insanity; but actual 
insanity is often preceded by stages in which 
it is possible to avert the impending doom. 
Moreover, other nervous and mental ills, not 
necessarily culminating in insanity, lend them- 
selves readily to treatment by the skilled 
psychopathologist, while obstinately refusing 
to yield to the methods of the orthodox 
schools. All of which should carry home to 
the unprejudiced observer the great desira- 
bility of furthering by every means possible 
the investigations already so rich in results 
despite the heavy handicaps imposed on the 
explorers. Europe has its Salpetriere and its 
psychopathic laboratories. The United States, 
with its 150,000 lunatics, can no longer afford 
to ignore the example of Europe. 

And now that we have gained, in large 
measure, thanks to the labors of such men as 
Liebeault and Bernheim and Janet and Sidis, 
clearer insight into the nature and faculties 
of personality, one monumental question re- 



106 The Riddle of Personality 

mains — the question of the survival of per- 
sonaKty after the death of the body. As my 
readers are aware, a systematized inquiry has 
been set on foot to determine the vaHdity of 
the traditional belief that personality persists 
beyond the grave, and we must now turn to 
examine the progress of this inquiry, not only 
on account of its inherent interest and im- 
portance, but because it has been the means 
of bringing to light many informing facts 
overlooked by the psychopathologists, whose 
concern has been with the obviously abnor- 
mal rather than the seemingly supernormal 
in human life. 



CHAPTER V 

The Evidence for Survival 

IN the opening chapter it was shown that 
the phenomena alleged to have eviden- 
tial value in support of the belief that 
human personality survives the death of the 
body fall into two great classes. The first 
comprises such ^'physical'' manifestations as 
rappings, apports, and the so-called materiali- 
zation of spirit forms ; the second includes the 
''psychical'' phenomena of auditions, appari- 
tions, crystal visions, automatic writing, and 
automatic speaking. The phenomena of both 
classes have been subjected to rigid scrutiny 
by the Society for Psychical Research. As 
regards the first the conclusion has been 
reached that, save when the public interests 
require protection, it is practically a waste of 
time and energy to investigate the perform- 
ances of those who claim thus concretely to 
demonstrate interworld communication. This 
conclusion is based on several considerations, 

107 



108 The Riddle of Personality 

not the least important of which is the fact 
that the "controls'' of the ''physical'' me- 
diums have not once met the conditions of 
tests of such a character as to dispense with 
the necessity for close and continuous obser- 
vation by the experimenters. 

''The Spiritualist," wrote Sir William 
Crookes, a generation ago, "tells of rooms 
and houses being shaken even to injury by 
superhuman power. The man of science 
merely asks for a pendulum to be set vibrat- 
ing when it is in a glass case and supported 
on solid masonry. 

"The Spiritualist tells of heavy articles of 
furniture moving from one room to another 
without human agency. But the man of 
science has made instruments which will 
divide an inch into a million parts, and he is 
justified in doubting the accuracy of the 
former observations if the same force is 
powerless to move the index of his instrument 
one poor degree. 

"The Spiritualist tells of flowers with the 
fresh dew on them, of fruit, and living ob- 
jects, being carried through closed windows 
and even solid brick walls. The scientific 
investigator naturally asks that an additional 



The Evidence for Survival 109 

weight (if it be only the thousandth part of a 
grain) be deposited on one pan of his balance, 
when the case is locked. And the chemist 
asks for the thousandth of a grain of arsenic 
to be carried through the sides of a glass tube 
in which pure water is hermetically sealed/'^ 
This indictment is as valid to-day as the 
day it was drawn, and until some such re- 
quirement be fulfilled the ^* physical'' medi- 
ums must not complain if the thoughtful 
deem their feats suspect. Experience has 
demonstrated that even the best trained ob- 
servers fail to perceive all that transpires in 
the seance room; and that, consequently, the 
quick-witted medium of fraudulent tendencies 
has ample opportunity to effect his triumphs 
by trick and device. Conclusive proof of this 
was afforded by the late S. J. Davey, a member 
of the Society for Psychical Research, who, 
after a little practice, succeeded in duplicat- 
ing the most sensational performances of the 
^^slate-writing'' medium Eglinton. So suc- 
cessful was he that the English spiritists de- 
nounced him as a renegade medium. But he 
frankly operated throughout on the conjurer's 
principle that the hand is quicker than the 

1 "Researches in Spiritualism." By William Crookes, p. 6. 



110 The Riddle of Personality 

eye. One evening, to cite an illustration of 
his methods and his success, Mr. Davey 
visited the brothers Podmore, also members 
of the society, and, with Frank Podmore an 
interested observer, gave Austin a slate- 
writing seance. The latter afterwards wrote 
the following account of what took place: 

"A few weeks ago Mr. D. gave me a seance, 
and, to the best of my recollection, the follow- 
ing was the result: Mr. D. gave me an ordinary 
school slate, which I held at one end, he at 
the other, with our left hands; he then pro- 
duced a double slate, hinged and locked. 
Without removing my left hand, I unlocked 
the slate, and at Mr. D.'s direction placed 
three small pieces of chalk — red, green, and 
gray — inside. I then relocked the slate, 
placed the key in my pocket, and the slate on 
the table in such a position that I could easily 
watch both the slate in my left hand and the 
other on the table. After some few minutes, 
during which, to the best of my belief, I was 
attentively regarding both slates, Mr. D. 
whisked the first away, and showed me on 
the reverse a message written to myself. 
Almost immediately afterwards he asked me 
to unlock the second slate, and on doing so 



The Evidence for Survival 111 

I found to my intense astonishment another 
message written on both the insides of the 
slate — the Hnes in alternate colors and the 
chalks apparently much worn by usage. My 
brother tells me that there was an interval 
of some two or three minutes, during which 
my attention was called away, but I can only 
believe it on his word." 

Obviously, had Mr. Davey posed as a 
medium he would have won wide repute. 
But now read Frank Podmore's instructive 
comment : 

"'Mr. Davey allowed me to see exactly 
what was done, and this is what I saw: The 
* almost immediately' in the above account 
covered an interval of some minutes. Dur- 
ing this interval, and, indeed, throughout the 
seance, Davey kept up a constant stream of 
chatter, on matters more or less germane to 
the business in hand. Mr. A. Podmore, 
absorbed by the conjurer's patter, fixed his 
eyes on Davey's face, and the latter took ad- 
vantage of the opportunity to remove the 
locked slate, under cover of a duster, from 
under my brother's nose to the far end of the 
room, and there exchange it for a similar 
slate, with a previously prepared message, 



112 The Riddle of Personality 

which was then placed by means of the same 
maneuver with the duster in the position 
originally occupied by the first slate. Then, 
and only then, the stream of talk slackened, 
and Mr. A. Podmore's attention became 
concentrated upon the slate from which the 
sound of spirit writing was now heard to 
proceed. To me the most surprising thing 
in the whole episode was Mr. A. Podmore's 
incredulity when told that his attention had 
been diverted from the slate for an appre- 
ciable period.''^ 

As a matter of fact, the records of the 
Society for Psychical Research, so far as 
concerns the physical phenomena, form an 
exhaustive and dismal commentary on the 
gullibility of human nature and the devious 
ways of fraud. Did space permit it would 
be instructive to rehearse the exposures 
obtained through the society's efforts. Refer- 
ence may be made only to two cases of 
exceptional importance, the case of Madame 
Blavatsky and the case of Eusapia Paladino. 
Madame Blavatsky will be remembered as 
the founder of the Theosophical Society, 
which was organized in New York early in 

1 "Modem SpirituaUsm," Vol. II, pp. 217--8. 



The Evidence for Survival 113 

the seventies, and which, despite the proved 
imposture of its originator, still numbers its 
membership among the thousands. Accord- 
ing to Madame Blavatsky there existed in 
far-away Tibet a brotherhood of "'Mahat- 
mas" who had acquired powers enabling 
them to transcend the laws of nature and 
work marvels and miracles of all sorts. It 
was her claim to be a "'chela,'' or disciple, of 
the Mahatmas, and she also asserted that they 
were particularly interested in the fortunes 
of all owning allegiance to the Theosophical 
Society. In 1878 the headquarters of the 
society were removed from New York to 
Adyar, India, and now the outside world was 
regaled with most sensational stories. The 
Mahatmas, it was said, were accustomed to 
cause "'apparitions of themselves in places 
where their bodies are not," to hold converse 
with those to whom they so appeared, and to 
be aware of "what is going on where their 
phantasm appears.'' Such was the influence 
of these stories that in 1884 the Society for 
Psychical Research determined to investigate 
Madame Blavatsky 's claims. A committee 
was appointed consisting of Edmund Gurney, 
F. W, H. Myers, Frank Podmore, Professor 



114 The Riddle of Personality 

and Mrs. Sidgwick, J. H. Stack, and Richard 
Hodgson, and the last-named gentleman was 
commissioned to visit the Theosophical head- 
quarters and make a personal inquiry there. 
Thus we meet for the first time one of the 
most striking figures in the annals of psychical 
research. Thereafter, until his sudden death 
in Boston in the winter of 1905-06, not even 
F. W. H. Myers excelled Richard Hodgson 
in single-minded devotion to the task of 
endeavoring to determine scientifically the 
validity of the belief in the immortality of the 
soul. In the end, as will appear, Hodgson 
was, like Myers, converted to the spiritistic 
hypothesis. But Madame Blavatsky was not 
to be the means of his conversion. On the 
contrary, he succeeded in convicting her of 
the grossest frauds. He found that the letters 
on which she based her teachings were written, 
not, as she claimed, by the leader of the alleged 
saints of the Himalayas, but by herself or at 
her dictation. He also ascertained that the 
headquarters shrine at Adyar was equipped 
with a slide opening into Madame Blavatsky 's 
bedroom, and that she was thus enabled to 
extract from the shrine letters addressed to 
the Mahatmas by votaries, and in their stead 



The Evidence for Survival 115 

insert replies purporting to come direct from 
the rocky fastnesses of the Brotherhood. He 
even records that a clumsy attempt was made 
to persuade him of the genuineness of the 
phenomena, by causing to fall at his feet a 
letter addressed to him and seemingly mate- 
rializing out of the air. The mechanism of 
this pleasing performance, it subsequently 
developed, was a convenient crevice in the 
ceiling, a thread, and a crafty operator. In 
fine, the exposure was complete and Dr. 
Hodgson returned to England with laurels 
well won. 

Eusapia Paladino's history is quite different 
from that of Madame Blavatsky. She may 
be accepted as typical of the physical side of 
mediumship at its best. Materialization, levi- 
tation, all the more salient phenomena are 
in her repertoire. She was born in Italy in 
1854 and, judging from a reference in a 
spiritistic publication, displayed her medium- 
istic abilities before she was eighteen. But 
her fame remained local until 1892, when she 
was investigated by some Italian scientists 
whom she so completely mystified that they 
entered a verdict received with acclaim by 
spiritists the world over. In their report they 



116 The Riddle of Personality 

mentioned, with much else, that while she was 
seated, seemingly immovable, on the plat- 
form of a weighing machine the scales in- 
dicated a weight variation of some twenty 
pounds. The Society for Psychical Research 
became interested and a committee journeyed 
to France to meet the new celebrity, who gave 
them several seances at the home of Prof. 
Charles Richet. Although the sittings took 
place in a darkened room and were marked 
by some suspicious circumstances, the con- 
sensus of opinion was that Eusapia possessed 
supernormal gifts. Stay-at-home members of 
the society criticised this finding and, it being 
agreed that further inquiry was desirable, the 
medium was invited to England. Thither 
she went in the summer of 1895, and at first 
duplicated her former triumphs. But when 
Dr. Hodgson became one of the investigators 
another story was soon told. At his sugges- 
tion the precautions that had been taken were 
seemingly relaxed, and it was then found that 
Eusapia, with misplaced confidence, boldly 
utilized her hands and feet to obtain the 
phenomena that had previously amazed the 
beholders. The society at once lost all in- 
terest in her and she betook herself again to 



The Evidence for Survival 117 

the Continent, there, unfortunately, to per- 
suade many sympathizers that she had been 
badly used in England and that, even if 
she had to a certain extent indulged in de- 
ception, the bulk of her phenomena were 
genuine.^ 

Quite apart from the fact that physical 
mediumship has failed to meet any really ex- 
acting test and has been shown to be perme- 
ated with fraud, there is one all-sufficient 
reason why investigation should chiefly be 
directed to the purely psychical phenomena. 
In order to be able to say positively that hu- 
man personality persists beyond the grave, 
it is obviously necessary to establish the 
identity of the alleged communicating spirit. 
For this purpose the physical phenomena, 
or at any rate the vast majority of them, are 
valueless. To be sure, evidential significance 
may attach to such manifestations as rappings 
which profess to convey a coherent message 
from the world beyond, but such feats as levi- 
tation, elongation, and the production of 
apports, difficult though it may be to explain 
them, are manifestly impossible of citation as 
proof of personal identity. This objection 

1 See Appendix I. 



118 The Riddle of Personality 

does not apply to the psychical phenomena, 
which further differ from the physical in the 
important respect that patient and pains- 
taking inquiry by the Society for Psychical 
Research into collected instances of appari- 
tions, auditions, automatically written or 
uttered messages, etc., has led the investigators 
to believe that, making all possible allowance 
for fraud, illusion, chance coincidence, and 
similar sources of error, a large residue re- 
mains requiring explanation on some other 
hypothesis. 

In order to appreciate the nature of the 
evidence accumulated, let us glance at a few 
typical instances, each drawn from the society's 
records and thus suflSciently authenticated to 
merit serious consideration. We may begin 
with an old-fashioned "ghost" story of the 
simpler sort. In this instance the percipient, 
a Mr. J., was a personal acquaintance of 
F. W. H. Myers, who obtained a first-hand ac- 
count of the experience. In 1880, it appears, 
Mr. Q., the librarian of X. library, died and 
Mr. J. was appointed his successor. Mr. J. had 
not known Mr. Q. nor had he, to his know- 
ledge, seen any portrait of him when, in 1884, 
or four years after his death, he made the old 



The Evidence for Survival 119 

librarian's acquaintance under these circum- 
stances : 

"I was sitting alone in the library one 
evening late in March, 1884, finishing some 
work after hours, when it suddenly occurred 
to me that I should miss the last train to H., 
where I was then living, if I did not make 
haste. ... I gathered up some books in one 
hand, took the lamp in the other, and pre- 
pared to leave the librarian's room, which 
communicated by a passage with the main 
room of the library. As my lamp illumined 
the passage I saw apparently at the end of it a 
man's face. I instantly thought a thief had 
got into the library. ... I turned back into 
my room, put down the books, and took a 
revolver from the safe, and, holding the lamp 
cautiously behind me, I made my way along 
the passage . . . into the main room. Here 
I saw no one, but the room was large and 
encumbered with bookcases. I called out 
loudly to the intruder to show himself several 
times, more with the hope of attracting a 
passing policeman than of drawing the in- 
truder. Then I saw a face looking round one 
of the bookcases. I say round, but it had an 
odd appearance as if the body were in the 



120 The Riddle of Personality 

bookcase, as the face came so closely to the 
edge and I could see no body. The face was 
pallid and hairless, and the orbits of the eyes 
were very deep. I advanced toward it, and 
as I did so I saw an old man with high 
shoulders seem to rotate out of the end of the 
bookcase, and with his back toward me, and 
with a shuffling gait, walk rather quickly 
from the bookcase to the door of a small 
lavatory, which opened from the library and 
had no other access. I heard no noise. I 
followed the man at once into the lavatory; 
and to my extreme surprise found no one 
there. . . . Completely mystified, I even looked 
into the little cupboard under the fixed basin. 
There was nowhere hiding for a child, and I 
confess I began to experience for the first 
time what novelists describe as an ^ eerie' 
feeling. I left the library, and found I had 
missed my train. 

*^Next morning I mentioned what I had 
seen to a local clergyman who, on hearing my 
description, said, 'Why, that's old Q. !' Soon 
after I saw a photograph (from a drawing) of 
Q., and the resemblance was certainly strik- 
iiig- Q- had lost all his hair, eyebrows and 
all, from (I believe) a gunpowder accident. 



The Evidence for Survival 121 

His walk was a peculiar, rapid, high-shoul- 
dered shuffle. Later inquiry proved he had 
died at about the time of year at which I saw 
the figure/'^ 

This is a capital illustration of the revenant 
type of apparition, the ''ghost" that visits a 
locality with which it was familiar in life. 
Somewhat similar, but having a coincidental 
significance, is the story of the ''ghost'' seen 
by the Essex gardener, who one morning be- 
held, as he thought, a lady whom he knew 
standing by a family tomb. The lady in 
question was then supposed to be in London, 
but as she had an almost morbid habit of 
visiting the tomb, the gardener supposed that 
she had returned from the city. Later it was 
learned that at the time he imagined he saw 
her she was lying dead in London. Most 
apparitions, by the way, or at any rate most 
of those recorded by the society, are reported 
as appearing either at the moment of, or 
shortly after, the death of the bodily or- 
ganism, and usually the percipients are the 
immediate relatives or close personal friends 
of the deceased. Sometimes, it would seem, 

1 "Human PersonaKty and its Survival of Bodily Death," Vol. 11, 
pp. 380-1. 



122 The Riddle of Personality 

'* ghosts" reveal themselves only to persons 
in extremis. Thus, an unnamed but *' well- 
known Irish gentleman'' relates that when 
his wife was dying she aflBrmed that she saw 
in a corner of the room a certain Julia Z., 
who had once sung at a house party given 
by the dying woman and whose apparition, 
according to the unhappy percipient, was 
even then singing. Since Julia Z. was, to 
the best of his knowledge, alive and well, her 
husband suspected all this to be "nothing 
but the fantasies of a dying person." The 
day after his wife's death, however, he was 
astounded to learn that Julia Z. had herself 
died a fortnight earlier, and on writing to the 
latter's husband was told that "on the day 
she died she began singing in the morning, 
and sang and sang until she died." 

Then there is the "ghost" that appears to 
warn a living person of impending misfor- 
tune. Take the strange case of Mr. F. G., 
of Boston, who writes: 

"In 1867 my only sister, a young lady of 
eighteen years, died suddenly of cholera in 
St. Louis, Mo. My attachment for her was 
very strong, and the blow a severe one to me. 
A year or so after her death the writer became 



The Evidence for Survival 123 

a commercial traveler, and it was in 1876, 
while on one of my Western trips, that the 
event occurred. 

''I had 'drummed' the city of St. Joseph, 
Mo., and had gone to my room at the Pacific 
House to send in my orders, which were 
unusually large ones, so that I was in a very 
happy frame of mind indeed. . . . The hour 
was high noon, and the sun was shining 
cheerfully into my room. While busily smok- 
ing a cigar and writing out my orders, I sud- 
denly became conscious that some one was 
sitting on my left, with one arm resting on 
the table. Quick as a flash I turned and 
distinctly saw the form of my dead sister, 
and for a brief second or so looked her squarely 
in the face; and so sure was I that it was she, 
that I sprang forward in delight, calling her 
by name, and, as I did so, the apparition 
instantly vanished. Naturally I was startled 
and dumfounded, almost doubting my senses; 
but the cigar in my mouth, and pen in hand, 
with the ink still moist on my letter, I satis- 
fied myself I had not been dreaming and was 
wide awake 

''Now comes the most remarkable confirma- 
Hon of my statement, which cannot be doubted 



124 The Riddle of Personality 

by those who know what I state actually 
occurred. This visitation, or whatever you 
may call it, so impressed me that I took the 
next train home, and in the presence of my 
parents and others I related what had occurred. 
My father, a man of rare good sense and very 
practical, was inclined to ridicule me, as he 
saw how earnestly I believed what I stated; 
but he, too, was amazed when later on I told 
them of a bright red line or scratch on the 
right-hand side of my sister's face, which I 
distinctly had seen. When I mentioned this 
my mother rose trembling to her feet and 
nearly fainted away, and as soon as she 
sufficiently recovered her self-possession, with 
tears streaming down her face, she exclaimed 
that I had indeed seen my sister, as no living 
mortal but herself was aware of that scratch, 
which she had accidentally made while doing 
some little act of kindness after my sister's 
death. She said she well remembered how 
pained she was to think she should have, un- 
intentionally, marred the features of her dead 
daughter, and that unknown to all, how she 
had carefully obliterated all traces of the 
slight scratch with the aid of powder, etc., 
and that she had never mentioned it to a 



The Evidence for Survival 125 

human being from that day to this. In proof, 
neither my father nor any of our family had 
detected it, and positively were unaware of 
the incident, yet / saw the scratch as bright 

as if just made . " ^ ^^^^^ ^-— __^I^ 

Whatever the explanation of the apparition 
it was the means of bringing the son home to 
take a long, last farewell of his mother, for 
she died within a fortnight of his return, 
"'happy in her belief she would rejoin her 
favorite daughter in another world/' And 
now to turn to psychical phenomena of an- 
other type, the auditory hallucinations by 
which knowledge seems to be conveyed of 
deaths occurring far outside the normal ken 
of the percipient. The experience of a Mr. 
Wambey is typical. Once, when planning a 
congratulatory letter to a friend, the words, 
"" What! write to a dead man ? write to a dead 
man?'' rang in his ears, and he later found 
that his friend had been dead for some days. 
Far more bizarre was an incident related to 
Mr. Myers by a Mrs. Davies. An acquaint- 
ance of hers had changed her abode unex- 
pectedly, and it was arranged that Mrs. 

1 "Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death," Vol. II, 
pp. 27-28. 



126 The Riddle of Personality 

Davies should receive her mail until she 
could communicate her new address to her 
friends, and particularly to her husband, who 
was in India. One evening a letter arrived 
bearing the India postmark, and Mrs. Davies 
placed it on the chimney-piece intending to 
ask her brother to hand it next day to the 
addressee. Suddenly she became aware of 
a strange ticking sound that seemed to pro- 
ceed from the letter itself. Her brother, too, 
heard it and, yielding to superstition, they 
imagined that the sound meant, "Important. 
To be delivered at once.'' The brother 
thereupon put on his hat and carried the 
letter to their friend, who found it to be a 
communication from an unknown correspond- 
ent, some servant, or companion, notifying 
her of her husband's death. 

Taken singly, such incidents as the above 
are not without impressiveness. Considered 
in the aggregate, and as massed by the thou- 
sand with corroborative data carefully pre- 
served in the society's archives, they may well 
give one pause. ^ There remains to be men- 
tioned the evidence derivable from those 
automatisms of hand and tongue in which 

1 See Appendix II. 



The Evidence for Survival 127 

the medium, seemingly surrendering her facul- 
ties to the control of some external intelli- 
gence, writes or utters messages ostensibly 
coming from discarnate spirits, and some- 
times conveying such private personal in- 
formation as to convince many of the identity 
of the alleged communicant and, consequently, 
of the validity of the belief in spirit communi- 
cation. In their day Moses and Home, in 
addition to being mediums for physical phe- 
nomena, were automatic mediums of no small 
renown. But in this respect they and all 
other mediums have been outshone by a New 
England woman, the celebrated Mrs. Leonora 
F. Piper, of Arlington, Mass., whose history 
may advantageously be reviewed as represent- 
ing psychical mediumship at its zenith. 

What makes the case of Mrs. Piper doubly 
interesting is the circumstance that for fully 
twenty years she has been under the close 
observation of members of the Society for 
Psychical Research and has not once been 
detected in fraudulent practices. She was 
brought to the notice of the society in 1885 
by Professor James, who wrote that he was 
^'persuaded of the medium's honesty and of 
the genuineness of her trance, and although 



128 The Riddle of Personality 

at first disposed to think that the 'hits' she 
made were either lucky coincidences, or the 
result of knowledge on her part of who the 
sitter was and of his or her family affairs, I 
now believe her to be in possession of a power 
as yet unexplained." At that time Mrs. 
Piper was supposed to be "'controlled'' by 
the spirit of a French physician with the 
peculiar name of ''Phinuit," through whose 
instrumentality various sitters, including men 
prominent in the scientific life of the United 
States, received more or less intimate mes- 
sages purporting to come from deceased 
friends. 

Such was the impression made on the 
society by Professor James's report that in 
1887 Dr. Hodgson was commissioned to go 
to America and conduct an inquiry. His first 
step was to employ detectives to shadow both 
Mr. and Mrs. Piper, but nothing suspicious 
was discovered in the conduct of either, and, 
satisfied that, whatever their source, the 
phenomena manifested through her were not 
to be explained on the basis of fraud. Dr. 
Hodgson recommended that she be invited 
to England for further investigation. Upon 
her arrival elaborate precautions were taken 



The Evidence for Survival 129 

to prevent her securing any information con- 
cerning prospective sitters. She was met at 
Liverpool by Sir Oliver Lodge and conducted 
to a hotel, whence Mr. Myers took her to his 
home at Cambridge. There she was attended 
by a servant — a young woman from a coun- 
try village — selected by Mr. Myers and quite 
ignorant of his and his friends' affairs. Her 
baggage was carefully overhauled for any 
data she might have brought with her, and 
her daily mail was closely examined. But no 
evidence was forthcoming to show that she 
secured her trance information by normal 
means. 

Numerous sittings were held, not all of 
which were successful and some of which 
were marked by distinctly suspicious failures. 
But when success was achieved it was con- 
spicuous and startling. To give an instance, 
Sir Oliver Lodge handed to the entranced 
Mrs. Piper a watch he had procured from an 
uncle who in turn had inherited it from a 
twin brother, then dead for some twenty years. 
Immediately "Phinuit,'' claiming to speak in 
behalf of the deceased uncle, recited several 
incidents of the latter's youth, and these were 
subsequently corroborated by the living uncle. 



130 The Riddle of Personality 

Striking success was likewise obtained in the 
case of a Mr. Thompson. I quote from Sir 
OHver Lodge : 

''One of the best sitters was my next-door 
neighbor, Isaac C. Thompson, F.L.S., to 
whose name indeed, before he had been in 
any way introduced, Phinuit sent a message 
purporting to come from his father. Three 
generations of his and of his wife's family, 
living and dead (small and compact Quaker 
families), were, in the course of two or three 
sittings, conspicuously mentioned, with identi- 
fying detail; the main informant representing 
himself as his deceased brother, a young 
Edinburgh doctor, whose loss had been 
mourned some twenty years ago. The fa- 
miliarity and touchingness of the messages 
communicated in this particular instance were 
very remarkable, and can by no means be 
reproduced in any printed report of the sitting. 
Their case is one in which very few mistakes 
were made, the details standing out vividly 
correct, so that in fact they found it impos- 
sible not to believe that their relatives were 
actually speaking to them.''^ 

1 "Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research," Vol. VI, 
p. 455. 



The Evidence for Survival 131 

Puzzled, but not wholly persuaded that the 
messages delivered through Mrs. Piper actu- 
ally came from the dead, the society directed 
Dr. Hodgson to continue investigation in the 
United States. This mission, it may be added 
in passing, occupied him to the day of his 
death and was ultimately the means of con- 
verting him to the spiritistic hypothesis. 

Shortly after Mrs. Piper's return to America 
her "" control'' changed under most extraor- 
dinary circumstances. There had been liv- 
ing in Boston a young lawyer and author, 
known in the society's records under the 
pseudonym of George Pelham, between whom 
and Dr. Hodgson a warm friendship had 
arisen. Naturally, they discussed at times 
the subject of Dr. Hodgson's labors, and Pel- 
ham, who was a thoroughgoing skeptic, on 
one occasion laughingly promised Dr. Hodg- 
son that should he die before the latter and 
find himself *' still existing" he would "make 
things lively" in the effort to reveal the fact 
of his continued existence. In February, 
1892, he was killed accidentally, and probably 
instantaneously, by a fall. About a month 
later, at a sitting attended by Dr. Hodgson 
and a Mr. Hart, another friend of the dead 



132 The Riddle of Personality 

lawyer, ^'Phinuit" suddenly announced that 
''George Pelham'' was present and wished 
to communicate. Then followed a series of 
statements tending to prove that the com- 
municant was none other than Pelham him- 
self. Pelham's real name was given in full, 
also the names of several of his most intimate 
friends, and reference was made to incidents 
unknown to either of the sitters but subse- 
quently verified by them. 

Further proof of identify was offered at 
later seances, and it soon became evident 
that ''George Pelham" intended to oust 
"Phinuit'" from control. With the substi- 
tution, which was gradual, the mechanism 
of Mrs. Piper's mediumship was likewise 
strangely altered. During the "Phinuit'' 
regime the messages had been delivered 
orally; now they were transmitted by means 
of automatic writing, a feature which per- 
sisted with the subsequent appearance of new 
"controls,'' none other than the "Impera- 
tor," "Rector," "Doctor," "Mentor," and 
"Prudens" group that had in bygone years 
claimed to "control" the trance utterances of 
the Rev. Stainton Moses. It was also notice- 
able that with the change in method of de- 



The Evidence for Survival 133 

livery the messages assumed a finer tone of 
reality, and so striking did they become that 
by 1898 Dr. Hodgson, who had previously 
issued a report dismissing alike the theory of 
fraud and the spiritistic hypothesis, felt im- 
pelled to adopt the latter unreservedly. 

Now appeared a new investigator in the 
person of Dr. James H. Hyslop, at that time 
professor of logic and ethics in Columbia 
University. With the cooperation of Dr. 
Hodgson he held seventeen sittings with Mrs. 
Piper during 1898 and 1899, and in each took 
extraordinary precautions to make sure that 
she would not recognize him. Driving to her 
residence in a closed carriage, he donned a 
mask before entering her presence, was in- 
troduced to her as ''Mr. Smith,'' and while 
she was in her normal state maintained com- 
plete silence. From the outset he obtained 
messages that left him in a state of bewilder- 
ment, relating as they did to occurrences 
transpiring years earlier in connection with 
the careers of dead relatives and friends. 
Frequently the alleged communicator was the 
''spirit" of his father, who recounted many 
incidents unknown to Professor Hyslop, but 
afterwards learned to be true. In the end the 



134 The Riddle of Personality 

professor, like Dr. Hodgson before him, 
adopted the spiritistic hypothesis as the only 
theory adequate to meet all facts in the case. 
And in this view he has been further con- 
firmed by a development of quite recent ori- 
gin, the displacement of the old ''controls'' — 
''George Pelham,'' "Imperator,'' and the 
rest — by the "spirit'' of none other than 
the veteran psychical researcher. Dr. Hodgson 
himself. 

As things stand, it is asserted, Dr. Hodgson 
dead directs the investigation of Mrs. Piper 
even more effectively that did Dr. Hodgson 
alive. Taking possession of her entranced 
organism, he has attempted, at sittings 
attended by Professors Hyslop and James 
among others, to give absolute and unques- 
tionable proof of his continued existence. 
Professor Hyslop seems persuaded that he 
has actually been in communication with his 
dead colleague; and Professor James, who is 
preparing a report on the "Hodgson" mani- 
festations, deems "it all extremely baffling." 

In point of fact, altogether apart from what 
may have developed since Dr. Hodgson's 
death, the conclusion from the cumulative 
evidence of the Piper case and the cases of 



The Evidence for Survival 135 

apparition, etc., collected by the Society for 
Psychical Research, would naturally seem to 
be that spirit communication has been defi- 
nitely proved and that, therefore, we now know 
for certain that human personality survives 
the death of the body. Nevertheless, before 
finally accepting the spiritistic hypothesis 
as proved it is imperative to endeavor to 
ascertain whether there may not be some 
other hypothesis, devoid of supernatural impli- 
cations, which will account for the phenomena 
in question. The hypothesis of wholesale 
fraud and delusion is — or so it seems to me — 
quite out of question, although still main- 
tained by many who would thus summarily 
dismiss the facts so laboriously assembled. 
But there remains another hypothesis, a 
hypothesis rendered available by the society's 
researches into the possibility of the trans- 
mission of thought from mind to mind with- 
out the intervention of the ordinary means of 
communication. Let us look into the sub- 
ject more closely. 



CHAPTER VI 

The Nemesis of Spiritism 

IN indicating the reasons for proffering 
the suggestion that in telepathy may be 
found an adequate explanation of all 
phenomena like those recorded in the pre- 
ceding chapter, it is only fair to begin by re- 
minding the reader that, as stated on an earlier 
page, telepathy is itself held suspect by many 
of intellectual and scientific eminence. In 
the face of the evidence accumulated by the 
Society for Psychical Research and by in- 
dependent inquirers during the past quarter 
of a century, these skeptics do not hesitate to 
deny that thought can be transmitted from 
mind to mind without passing through the 
ordinary, known channels of communication. 
They lay much stress on the obvious fact that 
telepathy is not demonstrable at will, and, too 
often without undertaking any personal in- 
quiry, they brush aside as resting on chance 
or collusion or imagination the enormous mass 

136 



The Nemesis of Spiritism 137 

of evidence already garnered from every 
quarter of the world. To the present writer, 
as to other and more competent students of 
the subject, this position is wholly untenable. 
It is quite true that we are sadly ignorant of 
the laws of telepathy ; but it would seem equally 
certain that telepathy itself is an established 
fact — established by the experiments of the 
psychical researchers and by the thousands 
upon thousands of spontaneous instances re- 
corded by individuals. 

Nor are we wholly in the dark as to the 
nature and mechanism of telepathy. From 
the labors of Myers, Sidgwick, Gurney, et al., 
we know, for example, that telepathy is dis- 
tinctly a faculty of that hidden portion of our 
being which Myers so happily termed the 
subliminal self. We know, further, that while 
telepathic messages are of most frequent 
occurrence between those allied by ties of 
blood or friendship, they are possible between 
mere acquaintances, even between strangers. 
And investigation has likewise shown that 
such messages are often conveyed not in the 
form of an idea but as hallucinations, audi- 
tory or visual, and not infrequently as sym- 
bolical hallucinations. To quote from the 



138 The Riddle of Personality 

experience of the late Thomson Jay Hudson, 
one of the best-known students of telepathy : 

"'I determined, if possible, to develop the 
faculty [of telepathy] in my own mind, at 
least far enough to resolve any lingering 
doubt that might be unconsciously enter- 
tained. Accordingly, I caused myself to be 
securely blindfolded in presence of my family 
and two or three trustworthy friends, and in- 
structed them to draw a card from the pack, 
place it upon a table, face up, and in full view 
of all but myself. I enjoined absolute silence, 
and requested them to gaze steadily upon the 
card and patiently await results. I deter- 
mined not to yield to any mere mental im- 
pression, but to watch for a vision of the card 
itself. I endeavored to become as passive 
as possible, and to shut out all objective 
thoughts. In fact, I tried to go to sleep. I 
soon found that the moment I approached a 
state of somnolence I began to see visions of 
self-illuminated objects floating in the dark- 
ness before me. If, however, one seemed to 
be taking definite shape it would instantly 
rouse me, and the vision would vanish. At 
length I mastered my curiosity suflSciently 
to enable me to hold the vision long enough 



The Nemesis of Spiritism 139 

to perceive its import. When that was accom- 
pHshed, I saw — not a card with its spots 
clearly defined, but a number of objects 
arranged in rows and resembling real dia- 
monds. I was finally able to count them, 
and finding that there were ten, I ventured 
to name the ten of diamonds. The applause 
which followed told me that I was right, and 
I removed the bandage and found the ten of 
diamonds lying on the table. The vision was 
symbolical merely, but no other possible 
symbol could have conveyed a clearer idea 
of the fact as it existed.''^ 

In further experiments Dr. Hudson ob- 
tained similar results, confirmation of which 
has been repeatedly given by other investi- 
gators who have also demonstrated the occur- 
rence of hallucinations exactly corresponding 
to the object in the mind of the agent, or 
sender, and have in addition made certain 
the possibility of what is technically known 
as deferred percipience. In deferred percipi- 
ence the telepathic message, after its receipt 
by the subliminal self, lies submerged beneath 
the threshold of consciousness until favor- 
ing conditions (e,g., hypnosis, normal sleep, 

1 "The Evolution of the Soul," by T. J. Hudson, p. 188. 



140 The Riddle of Personality 

fatigue, or other causes inhibiting the action 
of the suprahminal self) permit its appearance 
above the threshold. A striking illustration, 
both of veridical hallucination and deferred 
percipience, is afforded by an experiment 
tried more than twenty years ago by an Eng- 
lish clergyman, the Rev. Clarence Godfrey, 
who undertook to cause a distant friend, a 
lady whose identity is not revealed in the 
records of the case, to see a telepathic appari- 
tion of him. Accordingly, when he retired 
one evening (at 10.45 p.m., on November 15, 
1886), he began intently to "'wiir' that she 
should see him. His ^^ willing'' lasted for 
less than ten minutes, when he fell asleep. 
Some hours later his friend had the following 
uncanny experience: 

*' Yesterday — viz., the morning of Novem- 
ber 16, 1886 — about half -past three o'clock, 
I woke up with a start and an idea that some 
one had come into the room. I heard a curi- 
ous sound, but fancied it might be the birds 
in the ivy outside. Next I experienced a 
strange, restless longing to leave the room 
and go down stairs. This feeling became so 
overpowering that at last I arose and lit a 
candle and went down, thinking that if I 



The Nemesis of Spiritism 141 

could get some soda water it might have a 
quieting effect. On returning to my room 
I saw Mr. Godfrey standing under the large 
window on the staircase. He was dressed in 
his usual style, and with an expression on his 
face that I have noticed when he has been 
looking earnestly at anything. He stood 
there, and I held up the candle and gazed at 
him for three or four seconds in utter amaze- 
ment, and then, as I passed up the staircase, 
he disappeared. The impression left on my 
mind was so vivid that I fully intended wak- 
ing a friend who occupied the same room as 
myself, but remembering that I should only 
be laughed at as romantic and imaginative, 
I refrained from doing so."^ 

Nor does this case stand alone, the records 
of the Society for Psychical Research con- 
taining a number of similar experiments 
successfully carried out. Thus, a Mr. Kirk 
from a distance of several miles caused a 
telepathic phantasm to appear to a Miss G., 
and this in broad daylight. Miss G.'s re- 

^This account was written by the percipient at Mr. Godfrey's 
request, and by him was transmitted to Frank Podmore. For de- 
tails consult Mr. Podmore's "Apparitions and Thought Trans- 
ference," or the second edition of "Phantasms of the Living," by 
Edmund Gurney and others. 



142 The Riddle of Personality 

port, published in the society's *' Proceed- 
ings/' informs us: 

''A peculiar occurrence happened to me on 
the Wednesday of the week before last. In 
the afternoon (being tired by a morning walk) 
while sitting in an easy chair near the window 
of my own room, I fell asleep. At any time I 
happen to sleep during the day (which is but 
seldom) I invariably awake with tired, un- 
comfortable sensations which take some little 
time to pass off, but that afternoon, on the 
contrary, I was suddenly quite wide awake, 
seeing Mr. Kirk standing near my chair, 
dressed in a dark-brown coat, which I had 
frequently seen him wear. His back was 
toward the window, his right hand toward 
me; he passed across the room toward the 
door . . . but when he got about four feet from 
the door, which was closed, he disappeared.'' 

The significance of this phenomenon to our 
present subject of inquiry may be emphasized 
by yet another illustration — the experimental 
production, by means of telepathy, of an 
apparition not of the living but of the dead. 
The experimenter, a certain Herr Wesermann, 
determined to cause a Lieutenant N. to see in 
a dream a vision of a lady who had been dead 



The Nemesis of Spiritism 143 

for some years, his purpose being to incite 
Lieutenant N. thereby to '"a good action/' 
Eleven o'clock was selected by him as the 
hour for the experiment, nothing of which, of 
course, was know to N. But at eleven the 
latter, instead of being in bed and asleep, was 
conversing with a fellow officer in his room at 
the barracks. Nevertheless, the experiment, 
if Herr Wesermann's narrative is to be ac- 
cepted, was a complete and sensational suc- 
cess. The door of the chamber seemed to 
open and the *' ghost'' of the dead lady to 
walk in. Both of the astounded warriors 
claimed to have seen her distinctly, and both, 
upon her disappearance, excitedly summoned 
the sentinel, who assured them that no one 
had entered the room. 

It thus would seem possible to explain at 
least one of the two great divisions of psychi- 
cal phenomena — the apparitions and audi- 
tions — on a telepathic basis, and thereby 
completely avoid recourse to a spiritistic, 
supermundane hypothesis. Undoubtedly, had 
Mr. Godfrey or Mr. Kirk died at the moment 
of attempting their experiments, the percipi- 
ents would have believed to their last days 
that they had seen a ghost. But, nobody 



144 The Riddle of Personality 

being dead, "'spirits" were quite out of the 
question. Similarly, it is the writer's jQrm 
belief, even when the dead are involved there 
is no necessity of raising the cry of "spirits/' 
To put it otherwise, it is his conviction that 
whenever an apparition is seen, or a ghostly 
voice or sound heard (always excepting, of 
course, the effects of illusion pure and simple), 
we have to do with a telepathic hallucination 
proceeding not from the dead but from the 
living, if, it may be, the living about to be 
numbered with the dead. By way of illus- 
tration, let us glance again at the cases cited 
in the preceding chapter. 

There is, first, the ghost of the old librarian. 
On the telepathic hypothesis all that it is 
needful to assume is that the percipient, Mr. 
J., had at some time or other seen a portrait 
of his predecessor, Mr. Q., and had heard 
his characteristics mentioned. Mr. J. himself 
denied any knowledge thus gained, and his 
denial might well have been made in good 
faith, for such incidents could easily fade from 
his waking memory. They could not, how- 
ever, escape the memory of his subconscious, 
subjective, subliminal self, the self that never 
sleeps and never forgets, as hypnotic experi- 



The Nemesis of Spiritism 145 

ment has abundantly shown. We may readily 
imagine him, therefore, equipped subcon- 
sciously with an excellent mental portrait of 
Mr. Q., of whom his waking self is in com- 
plete ignorance. Thus equipped he is seated 
at his desk, late at night, and in a solitude 
that might easily breed "'nervousness.'' In 
fine, his environment and his occupation are 
admirably united to create a condition of sub- 
jective activity and to weaken his objective 
faculties. He rises to start for home, and as 
he rises his eye glimpses something. ''What's 
that.^" is his mental query, and "A face" is 
his mental reply. Instantly he begins to 
wonder, subconsciously, whose face it may 
be, and forthwith as a result of subconscious 
association of ideas there wells up, as it were, 
a full-length portrait of "old Q.," which pre- 
sents itself to the waking consciousness in 
the form of a visual hallucination. 

The ghost seen by the Essex gardener is at 
first sight far more difficult of explanation on 
the telepathic hypothesis, for the reason, as 
Messrs. Gurney and Myers were quick to 
point out,^ that it seems hard to imagine how 

1 "Proceedings of the Society of Psychical Research," Vol. V, 
p. 415. 



146 The Riddle of Personality 

a state of "rapport'' could have been created 
between the gardener and the lady whose 
figure he thought he saw standing by the 
tomb. But a little analysis will make the 
matter plain. We know that the gardener 
frequently saw the lady, while alive, visiting 
this particular tomb; and we are consequently 
warranted in assuming that the lady likewise 
saw the gardener, and, it being a somewhat 
solitary spot, while in that vicinity was un- 
likely to see any one else. Thus, if for no 
other reason, the thought of the gardener 
would be firmly implanted in her subjective 
mind. As she lay dying, our hypothesis 
would run, her subliminal, if not her supra- 
liminal, consciousness winged its way in 
imagination to the locality she delighted to 
visit, and in imagination beheld the tomb 
once more and with the tomb the gardener. 
Then, and not till then, would her subjective 
mind flash its message to his, to remain below 
the threshold of his consciousness until, in the 
morning and seven hours after her death, he 
approached the tomb. The sight of this 
might then cause him to think, consciously 
or subconsciously, of the familiar figure, and 
at once the telepathic message would be ex- 
ternalized as a "ghost.'' 



The Nemesis of Spiritism 147 

Similarly in the case of the vision of the 
singing Julia Z., seen and heard by the dying 
wife of the ^'well-known Irish gentleman." 
The published details, as given in the third 
volume of the ''Proceedings of the Society 
for Psychical Research/' show that there 
were excellent reasons why Julia Z. should 
associate her musical gift with the name of 
the Irish gentleman's wife, and consequently 
why, when on her deathbed, her subjective 
mind should transmit news of the impending 
tragedy to the subjective mind of the wife, 
to lie submerged there until the numbing of 
the latter's faculties and then appearing in the 
dual form of an auditory and visual hallucina- 
tion. In this, as in the instance of the ghost 
seen by the gardener, seems clearly exempli- 
fied the truth of what may be called a sub- 
theory of the telepathic theory — namely, that 
the subjective mind is most active at the 
moment of some crisis, it may be death, an 
accident, or the strain of an intense emotion. 

Next we have the apparition with the red 
scratch, seen by Mr. F. G., of Boston. This, 
the confirmed spiritist would hasten to assure 
us, is absolutely inexplicable by telepathy. 
But let us not lose heart too soon. The main 



148 The Riddle of Personality 

facts to be explained are the apparition itself, 
the perception of the scratch on the face of 
the apparition, and the death of Mr. F. G/s 
mother so soon after the apparition was seen. 
If the reader will refer to the fourth chapter 
he will there find in the portion descriptive 
of the work of Dr. Sidis a case throwing not 
a little light on the present problem. It is 
the case of Mr. R., the business man afflicted 
with a tremor. Upon hypnotization Dr. Sidis 
discovered that the subliminal self of Mr. II . 
was actively and constantly occupied with 
thoughts of the wife who had died some years 
before. Now, Mr. F. G. explicitly states 
that he was particularly fond of his deceased 
sister, and, arguing by analogy from the 
case of Mr. R. and other similar cases, we 
are warranted in the assumption that her 
image was frequently present in his subcon- 
sciousness. But, bearing in mind the scratch 
and the coincidental aspect of the apparition 
with respect to the speedy death of Mr. F. G.'s 
mother, we are not warranted in assuming 
that the hallucination was generated spon- 
taneously from Mr. F. G.'s subconsciousness. 
We must seek its origin elsewhere. 

We find it, the writer believes, in the sub- 



The Nemesis of Spiritism 149 

consciousness of the mother. It is a fact, 
though not generally known, that physical 
disorders frequently manifest themselves sub- 
consciously long before the patient becomes 
consciously aware of the action of the malady. 
Thus, to give an example from personal ex- 
perience, the writer some little time ago was 
obliged to submit to a surgical operation, the 
necessity for which was only accidentally dis- 
covered by his physician. He had consciously 
suffered no pain, not even any inconvenience. 
But, singularly enough, for weeks previous 
to the operation he had had a recurring sym- 
bolical dream of a cat tearing at the part 
ultimately found to be affected; and, once the 
surgeon's knife was used, this dream came 
no more. Quite possibly, therefore, the 
mother's subconsciousness possessed knowl- 
edge, denied to her waking self, of the disease 
that was so soon to terminate fatally. Thence 
might easily arise a subconscious yearning to 
see her son once more, and a subconscious 
determination to send him a message that 
would summon him home. In ''rapport'' as 
the mother and son doubtless were, the sub- 
liminal self of the former was well aware of 
the image constantly present to the sub- 



150 The Riddle of Personality 

liminal self of the latter, and it was this image, 
the image of the dead sister, that was utilized 
to express the mother's subconscious desire; 
but necessarily utilized, be it noted, not in the 
form present in the son's subconsciousness, 
but in that present in the mother's; that is to 
say, with the well-remembered scratch stand- 
ing out vividly. Possibly, too, the telepathic 
message had lain latent in his subconscious- 
ness for days, only appearing as a visual hal- 
lucination at the moment when, absorbed in 
the task of writing out his orders, he had 
temporarily lapsed into a state of ''distraction" 
similar to that of Dr. Sidis's patients, and was 
thus in a condition in which the contents of 
his subconsciousness could emerge most dis- 
tinctly into his waking field of vision. 

The writer is well aware that this explana- 
tion is hypothetical — as, indeed, all such 
explanations must be until the laws of tele- 
pathic action are known with greater certitude. 
But he submits that we already know enough 
to warrant the application of the telepathic 
hypothesis to all cases of this kind, and that 
such a course is more rational and logical 
than to attempt an explanation by the crude 
method of denying the facts, or to refer the 



The Nemesis of Spiritism 151 

phenomena to the action of ^^ spirits/' con- 
cerning which, in the very nature of things, 
we can know nothing at all. Very frequently 
the telepathic connection is difficult to trace 
— as in the above instance, and in the case of 
the ticking heard by Mrs. Davies and her 
brother — and sometimes it may well seem 
impossible to establish a casual nexus by 
telepathy. But it is the writer's conviction 
that once the psychologists, as a body, seri- 
ously attack the problem of apparitions and 
auditions, the case for telepathy as against 
spiritism will be definitely proved. 

Similarly with the mediumistic messages. 
These naturally divide into three classes, 
comprising statements of fact known to the 
medium, statements of fact not know^n to the 
medium but known to some other person 
present, and statements of fact known neither 
to the medium nor any other person present. 
As regards the first two classes even such a 
spiritistic advocate as Myers would admit the 
possibility of a telepathic explanation. The 
issue thus narrows to the ''statements of fact 
known neither to the medium nor any other 
person present." On the one side, we find 
the spiritist unreservedly declining to accept 



152 The Riddle of Personality 

telepathy as a possible factor if no one present 
have knowledge of the facts related by the 
soi-disant spirit; on the other, the telepathist 
aflSrming that if knowledge of the facts be 
possessed by any living person in ''rapport" 
with any person present at the seance we 
are logically bound to accept the telepathic 
hypothesis as affording a complete and natural- 
istic explanation. This at once raises the ques- 
tion: Is telepathy possible between more than 
two persons, the original agent and the origi- 
nal percipient? 

In other words, as stated by Dr. Hudson, 
who, if not the first to formulate it, was in his 
day the most ardent champion of the doctrine 
of telepathie a trois, or multiple telepathy: If 
A. can, by any means of communication, con- 
vey information to B., can B., by the same 
means, convey the same information to C, 
and C. likewise to D. .^ So far as concerns 
physical means of communicating intelligence 
the reply must obviously be in the afiirmative, 
and the argument by analogy would logically 
indicate a similar reply in the case of tele- 
pathy. Fortunately, we need not rely solely 
on the argument by analogy, for the actuality 
of multiple telepathy has — at any rate in the 



The Nemesis of Spiritism 153 

writer's opinion — been amply demonstrated 
by experiment. Space permits only two illus- 
trations, one from Dr. Hudson, the other 
from that versatile Scotchman, Andrew Lang, 
whose multifarious interests include psychical 
research. 

''I once hypnotized a lady," writes Dr. 
Hudson, ''and asked her to describe my home, 
which she knew nothing of. She described 
everything correctly, even a huge mastiff lying 
on a bearskin rug on the library floor. But 
doubt was thrown upon her lucidity when she 
described the library desk as being covered 
with a white cloth, and said that a lady was 
sitting at the desk 'doing something' which 
she could not clearly make out. As my desk 
is covered with black cloth, and as ladies 
seldom work at it, I regarded the description 
as an effort at guessing. But on my return 
home I learned that my wife had been 'doing 
something' with pulverized sugar, and had 
covered the table with newspapers to prevent 
accidents to the black cloth. As that was the 
only time in the long history of my library 
desk that it had been so covered or so em- 
ployed, I cannot ascribe the phenomenon to 
coincidence. Nor can I think of any other 



154 The Riddle of Personality 

way of explaining it than on the theory of 
telepathie a troisJ^^ 

It may be suggested, as Dr. Hudson 
promptly observes, that this was a case not of 
multiple telepathy but of clairvoyance. In 
point of fact, however, clairvoyance is itself 
explicable only on the telepathic hypothesis. 
And, in any event, clairvoyance could not 
possibly account for the singular circum- 
stances narrated by Mr. Lang: 

"'Again and again Miss Angus [a crystal 
gazer who is well known in England], sitting 
with man or woman, described acquaintances 
of theirs, but not of hers, in situations not 
known to the sitters, but proved to be true 
to fact. ... In one instance Miss Angus de- 
scribed doings, from three weeks to a fort- 
night old, of people in India, people whom 
she had never seen or heard of, but who were 
known to her sitter. Her account, given on 
a Saturday, was corroborated by a letter from 
India, which arrived next day, Sunday. In 
another case she described (about 10 p. m.) 
what a lady, not known to her, but the 
daughter of a matron present (who was not 
the sitter), had been doing about 4 p.m. on 

1 "The Evolution of the Soul," p. 140. 



The Nemesis of Spiritism 155 

the same day. . . . Again, sitting with the 
lady. Miss Angus described a singular set of 
scenes much in the mind, not of her sitter, 
but of a very unsympathetic stranger, who 
was reading a book at the other end of the 
room. I have tried every hypothesis, normal 
and not so normal, to account for these and 
analogous performances of Miss Angus. There 
was, in the Indian and other cases, no physi- 
cal possibility of collusion; chance coincidence 
did not seem adequate; ghosts were out of the 
question, so was direct clairvoyance. . . . 
Nothing remained for the speculative theo- 
rizer but the idea of cross currents of telepathy 
between Miss Angus, a casual stranger, the sit- 
ters, and people far away, known to the sitters 
or the stranger, but unknown to Miss Angus." 

Mr. Lang pertinently adds: 

"Now, suppose that Miss Angus, instead 
of dealing with living people by way of crystal 
visions, had dealt by way of voice, or auto- 
matic handwriting, and had introduced a dead 
'communicator.' Then she would have been 
on a par with Mrs. Piper, yet with no aid 
from the dead.''^ 

1 "Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research," Vol. XV, 
pp. 48-49. 



156 The Riddle of Personality 

In Mrs. Piper's case, as in that of all 
spiritistic mediums, a dead communicator is 
invariably introduced. But it does not neces- 
sarily follow that the medium is dishonest 
and on the same plane as those mediums who 
cause household furniture to indulge in ex- 
travagant antics. Hers is a pathological con- 
dition, the ^'trance'' being in reality a state 
of autohypnotization, in which the subliminal 
self for the time being has complete control 
of the bodily organism and, in accordance 
with the principles revealed by hypnotic ex- 
periment, adopts and enacts any personality 
suggested to it.^ Thus, accepting as valid 
the hypothesis of multiple telepathy, all of 
Mrs. Piper's "controls," past and present, 
are to be regarded as mere subliminal imper- 
sonations, and the facts transmitted by them 
as having been extracted telepathically from 
the sitter's subconsciousness.^ Exactly how 
these facts were originally lodged in the sitters' 
subconsciousness is a matter of comparative 
indifference, and is, it may readily be granted, 
often impossible of ascertainment. The im- 

1 The reader will find this phase of the subject well elaborated 
in the writings of Dr. Hudson and Mr. Podmore. 

2 For a detailed discussion of spiritistic objections to the telepathic 
hypothesis see Appendix V. 



The Nemesis of Spiritism 157 

portant point is that it is no longer necessary 
to maintain an attitude of sneering incredulity 
or of wide-eyed, open-mouthed amazement. 
The ''ghost'' of Sir Oliver Lodge's uncle, 
for example, vanishes into the depths from 
which it came, once it be realized that the 
incidents cited as proof of personal identity 
may be derived from the subliminal conscious- 
ness of Sir Oliver, telepathically conveyed 
thither, perchance by the subliminal self of 
the surviving uncle, perchance by the sub- 
liminal self of the deceased during his earthly 
career, and for the first time revealed to Sir 
Oliver's waking self by the mediumship, the 
telepathic not spiritistic mediumship, of Mrs. 
Piper. In the same way may we account for 
all the other facts of her mediumship as set 
forth in the voluminous reports of her in- 
vestigators. And as with Mrs. Piper, so with 
all mediums. 

From the view here set forth a most im- 
portant conclusion arises — that not only does 
the survival of personality after bodily death 
remain unproved, but that it can never be 
definitely proved by evidence scientifically 
acceptable. Even the supreme test proposed 
by Myers is nullified by the unescapable 



158 The Riddle of Personality 

operation of telepathy. This test consists in 
the writing of a message, which is then sealed, 
intrusted to the keeping of a responsible per- 
son, and left unopened until, after the writer's 
death, a mediumistic communication be re- 
ceived purporting to give, from the world 
beyond, the contents of the sealed paper. 
Who can prove that, during the writer's life- 
time, his subliminal self did not transmit the 
message telepathically to other subliminal 
selves .P Always telepathy confronts spiritism 
and in confronting conquers. 

It does not follow, however, that the Society 
for Psychical Research has expended its 
efforts in vain and should cease from endeavor. 
On the contrary, as the writer trusts these 
chapters have shown, its labors have been 
profitable in many unexpected ways. And if 
it has not proved survival, it has most as- 
suredly given mankind new and forceful 
reasons for clinging to the ancient faith. This 
it has done by enlarging and ennobling the 
conception of personality — a magnificent task 
in prosecuting which it has received invalu- 
able, if unwitting, assistance from the psy- 
chopathologists. Unwitting, because besides 
usually eying the psychical researcher askance 



The Nemesis of Spiritism 159 

the psychopathologist's idea of the self, as 
the reader has already discovered, differs con- 
spicuously from the idea entertained by the 
adventurer into the supernormal. Both recog- 
nize the existence and operation of subcon- 
scious states of the mind, but they speedily 
part company when it becomes a question of 
interpretation. As in most controversies, not 
all the right is with one side and all the wrong 
with the other. Further, it is possible, unless 
the writer greatly err, to reconcile their seem- 
ingly irreconcilable differences which, it may 
safely be affirmed, have their origin chiefly 
in the varying interests of the investigators. 

The self, as conceived by the psycho- 
pathologist, is a complex, unstable, and won- 
derfully responsive coordination of systems 
of ideas, with a physiological basis in the 
nervous system. Unity and continuity of 
memory and consciousness are its prime 
characteristics, and these are readily broken 
by neuron disturbances. Thence results a 
dissociation of greater or less violence, having 
its outward manifestations in, it may be, some 
criminal or vicious act or tendency, it may be 
in hysteria, it may even be in the utter dis- 
appearance of the old personality and the 



160 The Riddle of Personality 

formation of a new one. But, having defi- 
nitely ascertained that the neuron disturbance 
is purely functional and has not reached the 
organic stage involving cellular destruction, 
it is deemed quite possible to utilize the re- 
sponsivity of the self to effect a reaggregation 
and a consequent inhibition of the baneful 
phenomena. This theory — which, as we 
have seen, has resulted in discoveries of im- 
mediate curative value — manifestly regards 
the self of which we are normally conscious 
as, so to speak, the crowning triumph of 
neuron aggregation. But in thus stating his 
theoretical position the psychopathologist over- 
looks an all-important fact which in practice 
he constantly recognizes. 

This is the fact that when effecting a re- 
association he directs his appeal, in the last 
resort, not to the old and vanished per- 
sonality, nor to the dissociated, secondary 
personality, but to a self that persists beneath 
all the changing phenomena of consciousness. 
The truth of this will appear from the most 
cursory survey of the cases described in the 
chapters dealing with the work of the French 
and American psychopathologists. To put it 
otherwise, there are subconscious states and a 



The Nemesis of Spiritism 161 

subconscious state, deeper than all others and 
embracing all others, its content extending 
even to a conscious state of wake-a-day life. 
This sovereign state, need it be said, is the 
^'subliminal self of the psychical researcher 
who, for his part, has erred by neglecting to 
discriminate closely between it and the psycho- 
pathologist's "secondary self.'' 

At once we are confronted by the problem 
of the place of the self of which we are nor- 
mally conscious in the scheme of personality. 
Shocking as it may at first thought sound, 
everything would indicate that it is but a dis- 
sociation from the subliminal self, an incom- 
plete aggregation even as the dissociated states 
of neuron disturbance are incomplete aggre- 
gations. To the writer it seems impossible 
to evade this conclusion when we review the 
proved potentialities of our being as revealed 
in the phenomena of hypnotism and telepathy. 
Yet a moment's consideration should suflSce 
to inspire within us a lively hope — the hope 
that somehow, somewhere, at some time, these 
potentialities, realizable now only under ab- 
normal conditions, will become enduring 
actualities. The conditions of our environ- 
ment here on earth are such that it is impos- 



162 The Riddle of Personality 

sible to expect their development in this life 
to any but a limited extent. Yet it is incon- 
ceivable that they, any more than the faculties 
of which we daily avail ourselves in our com- 
merce with our fellows, are given to us for no 
purpose. Logic, therefore, unites with faith 
to buttress the conviction that there must be 
a life beyond, a hereafter in which we shall 
at last come into our complete heritage, at 
last be veritably as men grown to full stature. 



APPENDIX I 

D, D. Home and Eusapia Paladino 

Daniel Dunglas Home and Eusapia Pala- 
dino are undoubtedly the most impressive 
figures in the annals of physical medium- 
ship. Home, who died in France some twenty 
years ago, enjoyed the really unique distinc- 
tion of not once having had a charge of fraud 
proved against him. He was born in Scot- 
land in 1833, but as a child was taken by 
relatives to the United States, locating in a 
small Connecticut town. Not long after the 
outbreak of the Hydesville rappings, when the 
Fox sisters first entered upon their notoriety 
winning career, he displayed mediumistic 
abilities, and by 1852 had acquired a con- 
siderable reputation among the spiritists of 
the Atlantic States. In 1855, partly for the 
sake of his health, which was never robust, and 
partly as a missionary of spiritism, he went 
abroad, visiting in turn the principal cities 
of England and the continent, and exhibiting 
before many of the crowned heads of Europe. 

163 



164 Appendix I 

Everywhere he went he scored distinct 
triumphs, both as a medium and as a social 
favorite. He seems to have been a man 
of a fascinating personaKty, gaining with 
ease the friendship and confidence of all who 
came to know him. Belief in the genuineness 
of his pretensions was further strengthened 
by his persistent refusal to accept payment for 
his mediumistic performances — a fact which, 
it may incidentally be said, caused most 
people to overlook the equally obvious cir- 
cumstance that he none the less owed his 
livelihood almost entirely to his mediumship, 
admirers showering gifts upon him and fre- 
quently entertaining him as their guest for 
months at a time. In this, too, may be 
found a reason for his immunity from expo- 
sure. Given private seances, such as his usually 
were, among friends of a more or less lofty 
social position but untrained for exact ob- 
servation, and probability of trickery being 
detected would indeed become remote. 

Still, it must be said that the more striking 
of Home's feats are not easily explained on 
the hypothesis of sheer fraud. Pre-eminent 
among these is the phenomenon of levitation, 
numerous instances of which are recorded in 



D. D. Home and Eusapia Paladino 165 

his career, and notably on the occasion to 
which reference was made in the opening 
chapter. At that time (1868) Home was in 
London giving seances to a select coterie of 
patrons, including the Earl of Dunraven and 
the Earl of Crawford, who were then respec- 
tively known as Viscount Adare and the 
Master of Lindsay. These two gentlemen, 
together with a cousin of the former's, a Cap- 
tain Wynne, were the witnesses of the sensa- 
tional levitation, which Lord Crawford thus 
described in a statement to the London 
Dialectical Society: 

"'I saw the levitation in Victoria Street when 
Home floated out of the window. He first 
went into a trance and walked about uneasily; 
he then went into the hall. While he was 
away I heard a voice whisper in my ear, 'He 
will go out of one window and in at another.' 
I was alarmed and shocked at the idea of so 
dangerous an experiment. I told the com- 
pany what I had heard, and we then waited 
for Home's return. Shortly after he entered 
the room. I heard the window go up, but 
I could not see it, for I sat with my back to it. 
I, however, saw his shadow on the opposite 
wall; he went out of the window in a horizontal 



166 Appendix I 

position, and I saw him outside the other 
window (that is, the next room) floating in the 
air. It was eighty-five feet from the ground/' 

Later, Lord Crawford corrected this state- 
ment by a letter in which he explained that 
the window out of which Home claimed to 
have floated was not that of the seance-room 
but of the chamber adjoining it, while the 
window of his entry was that opening into 
the seance-room. Lord Dunraven gave simi- 
lar testimony, declaring that '"we heard Home 
go into the next room, heard the window 
thrown up, and presently Home appeared 
standing upright outside our window; he 
opened the window and walked in quite 
coolly.'' It also seems that after his return 
in this seemingly miraculous manner. Home 
asked Lord Dunraven to close the window 
in the other room, and thereby led up to a 
second sensational ingident, of which Lord 
Dunraven was the only witness. To quote 
from the latter again: 

""I remarked [after closing the window and 
rejoining the others] that the window was not 
raised a foot, and that I could not think how 
he [Home] had managed to squeeze through. 
He arose and said, 'Come and see.' I went 



D. D. Home and Eusapia Paladino 167 

with him; he told me to open the window as 
it was before; I did so; he told me to stand 
a little distance off; he then went through 
the open space, head first, quite rapidly, his 
body being nearly horizontal and apparently 
rigid. He came in again feet foremost, and 
we returned to the other room. It was so 
dark I could not see clearly how he was sup- 
ported outside. He did not appear to grasp, or 
rest upon the balustrade, but rather to be swung 
out and in. Outside each window is a small 
balcony or ledge nineteen inches deep, bounded 
by stone balustrades eighteen inches high." 

Home's own belief was that the spirits had 
lifted him out and in, and held him supported 
in the air; and on the same theory he would 
also explain the phenomenon of elongation, 
to the verity of which Lords Dunraven and 
Crawford strongly testified. ''On one occa- 
sion,'' Lord Crawford asserted, in a Dialectical 
Society paper, ''I saw Mr. Home, in a trance, 
elongated eleven inches. I measured him 
standing up against the wall, and marked 
the place; not being satisfied with that, I put 
him in the middle of the room and placed a 
candle in front of him, so as to throw a shadow 
on the wall, which I also marked. When he 



168 Appendix I 

awoke I measured him again in his natural 
size, both directly and by the shadow, and 
the results were equal. I can swear that he 
was not off the ground or standing on tip-toe, 
as I had full view of his feet, and, moreover, 
a gentleman present had one of his feet placed 
over Home's insteps, one hand on his shoulder, 
and the other on his side where the false ribs 
come near the hipbone. . . . There was no 
separation of the vertebrae of the spine; nor 
were the elongations at all like those resulting 
from expanding the chest with air; the 
shoulders did not move. Home looked as if 
he was pulled up by the neck; the muscles 
seemed in a state of tension. He stood firmly 
upright in the middle of the room, and before 
the elongation commenced I placed my foot 
on his instep. I will swear he never moved 
his heels from the ground. ... I once saw 
him elongated horizontally on the ground; 
Lord Adare was present. Home seemed to 
grow at both ends, and pushed myself and 
Adare away." 

Another phenomenon for which Home be- 
came especially noted was that known as the 
fire ordeal. This, as its name indicates, in- 
volved his ability to handle blazing substances 



D. D. Home and Eusapia Paladino 169 

without injury to his person, and that he 
could do so is testified by numerous wit- 
nesses, including, besides Lords Crawford and 
Dunraven, the famous scientist Sir William 
Crookes. Early in 1871, his interest having 
been aroused by the many stories then afloat 
regarding Home's alleged supernormal powers. 
Sir William undertook an investigation of 
his mediumship, employing for the purpose 
specially designed apparatus which, unfor- 
tunately, did not exactly fulfil the require- 
ments laid down by Sir William himself and 
quoted in the fifth chapter of the present 
work. The results obtained, however, were 
so startling that Sir William, in reporting the 
seances held with Home, did not hesitate to 
afiirm that the existence of a hitherto unknown 
physical force had been amply demonstrated. 
Among much else, and perhaps chiefly im- 
pressing him, were several exhibitions of the 
fire ordeal. On one occasion. Sir William 
stated. Home deliberately drew from a grate 
fire several lumps of hot coal, including one 
that was *^ bright red,'' without sustaining any 
injury. On another he took a piece of ** red- 
hot" charcoal and placed it on a folded cam- 
bric handkerchief, fanning the charcoal to a 



170 Appendix I 

"white heat" with his breath, but doing no 
injury to the handkerchief beyond burning a 
minute hole in it. Afterwards Sir WiUiam 
tested the handkerchief in his laboratory and 
found that it had not been chemically treated 
to withstand the action of fire. And, imme- 
diately following this handkerchief feat, the 
medium indulged in another astonishing ex- 
hibition of his peculiar gift. 

"Mr. Home,'' Sir William Crookes declared, 
"again went to the fire, and after stirring the 
hot coal about with his hand, took out a red- 
hot piece nearly as big as an orange, and 
putting it on his right hand covered it over 
with his left hand, so as to almost completely 
enclose it, and then blew into the small fur- 
nace thus extemporized until the lump of char- 
coal was nearly white hot, and then drew my 
attention to the lambent flame which was flick- 
ering over the coal and licking round his fingers ; 
he fell on his knees, looked up in a reverent man- 
ner, held up the coal in front, and said, 'Is not 
God good ? Are not His laws wonderful ?^^'^ 

The only rational explanation of such per- 
formances as these, aside from unreserved 

^ "Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research," Vol. VI, 
p. 103. 



D. D. Home and Eusapia Paladino 171 

acceptance of the theory that they were ren- 
dered possible by the action either of dis- 
carnate spirits or of an unknown natural 
force, is that the spectators unconsciously 
gave totally erroneous accounts of what oc- 
curred. It is out of the question to cast 
doubts on the good faith of men like Lords 
Crawford and Dunraven and Sir William 
Crookes; but it is not unreasonable to as- 
sume that, under the influence of the at- 
mosphere of suggestion with which Home, 
like all other physical mediums, constantly 
surrounded his sitters, they were misled into 
believing that they had seen things which 
actually they had not seen at all. Certainly, 
there are indications that at least one of the 
three, the Earl of Crawford, was exceedingly 
suggestible; and every one who has attended a 
spiritistic seance is aware of the fact that the 
very manner of the medium, and his every 
word and look, are calculated to awaken and 
intensify whatever latent suggestibility there 
may be in the sitter. 

In fact, in Home's case it does not seem at 
all unlikely that the use of hypnotism was a 
contributing factor in the production of the 
astounding phenomena with which he is 



172 Appendix I 

credited. It is at least significant that at one 
stage in his career he was the recipient, from 
an aged and wealthy widow who had con- 
ceived a warm attachment for him, of gifts 
of money amounting to the enormous sum 
of $300,000, a benefaction which an English 
judge compelled him to relinquish on the 
ground that while no definite charge of undue 
influence had been brought home to him, it 
had not been clearly shown that the lady's 
acts were those of '^pure volition unin- 
fluenced/' At the same time, it will not do 
to class Home with the vulgar impostors and 
adventurers who have done so much to dis- 
credit spiritism among the thoughtful. All 
accounts agree in testifying to the evident 
sincerity of his belief that he was really in- 
vested with supernormal powers. And it is 
inconceivable that he could so easily have 
gained, and so tenaciously held, the confi- 
dence of men of the Dunraven-Crawford- 
Crookes stamp, had he been a mere trickster. 
The probability is that he deceived himself 
quite as much as he deceived others — that 
the frauds which we must believe he perpe- 
trated were committed bv him while in a 
dissociated state. Such a state, as the reader 



D. D. Home and Eusapia Paladino 173 

of the foregoing pages will understand, may 
easily become habitual; and the mere fact that 
he gave his whole life to the monotonous 
repetition of practically purposeless wonder 
workings is suflficient proof that he deviated 
widely from normal men. It is, then, not 
fair to hold him strictly accountable for his 
conduct; but neither is it wise to accept his 
performances at their face value and find in 
them proof of the existence either of super- 
natural or previously unknown but perfectly 
natural agencies. 

Precisely the same may be said of Eusapia 
Paladino, who has recently been once more 
thrust upon the attention of the public by 
reason of a series of seances given in the 
presence of a number of eminent Italian 
scientists, one of whom, the psychiatrist Henry 
Morselli, has reached the same conclusion 
at which Sir William Crookes arrived after 
his investigation of Home. In Eusapia's case, 
however, the investigators had as a starting- 
point the unpleasant knowledge that she had 
been repeatedly detected in fraud — even the 
credulous continental enthusiasts who lionized 
her after the English fiasco being forced to 
admit that she often showed an undue desire 



174 Appendix I 

to help out the spirits. Nevertheless, it is 
insisted by Professor Morselli, as by . other 
savants who have had seances with her in her 
native land during the past two years (1906 
and 1907), that fraud will not explain all the 
phenomena produced in her presence. 

Reading the evidence, however, as given 
by Professor Morselli and his associates in 
recent issues of the Annates des Sciences 
Psychiques, it is hard to understand just why 
this judgment should have been reached. 
The old, old story is told — a dimly lighted 
room, a curtained cabinet, dancing chairs 
and tables, and the flight of sundry articles 
of furniture through the air, with knockings 
and pinchings and occasional fugitive glimpses 
of spirit faces and heads and hands. Once 
in a while, but comparatively seldom, a novel 
manifestation would be vouchsafed. Thus, at 
one seance a metronome was set in motion 
while the spectators — who, it is asserted, 
could see the medium distinctly in the "semi- 
obscurity'' to which their eyes had become 
accustomed — failed to perceive a hand in 
contact with the instrument. Yet, as one 
of the onlookers naively remarked — "Met- 
ronomes do not have the habit of starting and 
stopping themselves." 



D. D. Home and Eusapia Paladino 175 

At the same seance, or rather after it was 
oflficially at an end, a ''large and heavy" stool 
paraded across the room towards Eusapia, 
and cleverly dodged an inquisitive investi- 
gator who sought to intercept it. At another 
seance an invisible hand grasped a dyna- 
mometer, carried it into the cabinet, and re- 
turned it with the index indicating a pressure 
"such as only the hand of a strong man could 
make/' Again, the curtain of the cabinet 
bulged out, outlining in its folds the form of a 
human being, and when a sitter placed his 
hand at the spot where the mouth of the hid- 
den spirit would presumably be, he received a 
very material bite on his thumb. As before, 
the medium was as plainly visible outside the 
cabinet as the "semi-obscurity'' would per- 
mit. Suspiciously enough, however. Professor 
Morselli at a later seance caught her in the 
act of furtively stretching out her hand to 
pick up a trumpet which, the next instant, 
flew from the table and disappeared into the 
cabinet amid universal amazement. 

The further one reads the greater becomes 
one's astonishment that the genuineness of 
the majority of the phenomena is vouched 
for by such really reputable men of science 



176 Appendix I 

as Professor Morselli and his fellow investi- 
gators. They do not, it is true, accept the 
spiritistic interpretation. But they do incline 
openly to the belief that in Eusapia Paladino 
the world possesses a medium for the operation 
of a secret force capable of overcoming the 
laws of nature so far as they are understood 
to-day. They would explain away her fraud 
and chicanery on the ground that while in the 
trance state she is not really herself, but is 
at the mercy of an irresponsible secondary 
personality — an explanation with which the 
present writer is in agreement, and which is 
quite satisfactory if the logical addendum be 
made, viz., that while in this secondary state 
it is altogether probable Eusapia cheats all 
the time, and that her successful phenomena 
are nothing more than tricks performed with 
a cunning which defies detection. In such 
matters the attitude assumed by the Society 
for Psychical Research is the only safe one. 
When the evidence proffered is of such a 
nature that its verity depends on the close and 
unfailing scrutiny of the human eye, a single 
conviction of fraud should be suflScient to 
deprive the offending medium of all right to 
further scientific investigation. 



APPENDIX II 

The Census of Hallucinations 

In addition to collecting from all parts of 
the world information that might throw light 
on the more obscure operations of the human 
mind and the possibility of discarnate spirits 
communicating with spirits still in the flesh, 
the Society for Psychical Research undertook 
in 1889 a statistical inquiry into hallucinations. 
This was begun with only modest expectations 
of securing data that would warrant definite 
statements regarding the extent and cause of 
sensory deceptions; and when, after several 
years' labor, the statistics were analyzed, it 
was found that results of far-reaching impor- 
tance had been obtained. 

The inquiry, which may fairly be described 
as a census, was under the direction of a 
special committee consisting of Professor and 
Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, F. W. H. Myers and 
his brother Dr. A. T. Myers, Frank Podmore, 
and Miss Alice Johnson. These enlisted the 

177 



178 Appendix II 

assistance of over four hundred collectors, or 
enumerators, each of whom was instructed 
to put the following question to twenty-five 
adults, chosen without reference to the proba- 
bility of receiving an affirmative answer: 

^'Have you ever, when believing yourself 
to be completely awake, had a vivid impression 
of seeing or being touched by a living being 
or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice; 
which impression, so far as you could dis- 
cover, was not due to any external physical 
cause .^ 

The enumerators were further directed to 
record the answer "'No" and the answer 
^'Yes" with equal scrupulousness, and to 
obtain if possible a written account of the 
hallucination whenever an affirmative answer 
had to be recorded. They were also instructed 
to exclude from consideration all hallucina- 
tions obviously connected with insanity, de- 
lirium, or sleep. 

Under these conditions some 17,000 per- 
sons were questioned, mostly acquaintances 
of the collectors but for all practical purposes 
chosen at random; and after deducting hal- 
lucinations of the character just mentioned 
there remained 1684 affirmative answers, rep- 



The Census of Hallucinations 179 

resenting almost ten per cent of the whole. 
To make sure that this corresponded to a 
true proportion, the committee instituted a 
comparison between the collectors' statistics 
and figures derived from inquiries made by 
the committee themselves among various unse- 
lected groups of persons. Curiously enough, 
the percentage of affirmative answers received 
from these groups exceeded those of the main 
investigation, and the warrantable inference 
was made that the latter had not exaggerated 
the situation. 

What this meant was a complete overthrow 
of the long-standing belief that hallucinations 
were inevitably associated with some malady 
— a belief which found its extreme expression 
in, for instance. Lord Brougham's endeavor 
to establish a law making the existence of a 
hallucination proof positive of insanity. So 
far from being of rare occurrence hallucina- 
tions, as the report on the society's census 
made very clear, are frequently experienced, 
and by persons of an entirely normal type. 
Even more important, from the standpoint of 
psychical research proper, was the discovery 
that many hallucinatory visions of absent 
friends and relatives were said to have been 



180 Appendix II 

experienced within one to twelve hours after 
the death of the person seen. Out of a 
total of 350 recognized apparitions of living 
persons no fewer than 65 were reported as 
being thus coincidental. For various reasons, 
fully stated in the report which will be found 
in the tenth volume of the society's "'Proceed- 
ings/' 33 of the alleged death coincidences 
were rejected, however, leaving a total of 
32 cases deemed beyond suspicion. 

At the same time, it was appreciated that 
the percipient of a hallucination was quite 
liable to forget all about it in the lapse of time, 
and that it was therefore not unlikely that the 
total of 350 recognized apparitions of living 
persons did not represent the actual number 
of such apparitions seen. Indeed, tabular 
arrangement of the reported hallucinations 
showed that while the number was compara- 
tively large for the most recent years, it de- 
creased rapidly as the years became remote 
— at ten years' distance being only half what 
it was for the nearest year. This, and other 
considerations, led to the conclusion that in 
order to arrive at the true number of hal- 
lucinations experienced the number reported 
must be multiplied by four. On the other 



The Census of Hallucinations 181 

hand, there was far less probability that a 
hallucinatory death coincidence would be for- 
gotten. Leaving the total number of death 
coincidences untouched, therefore, the com- 
mittee increased the total number of recog- 
nized apparitions by making the necessary 
correction for forgetfulness, and obtained as 
a final result a proportion of one death coin- 
cidence in every 43 cases. 

Taking the annual death rate for England 
and Wales at 19.15 per 1000, as given by the 
registrar-general's report for the year 1890, 
it was calculated that the probability that a 
given person would die on a given day was 
about one in 19,000 — or that, in other words, 
out of every 19,000 apparitions of living per- 
sons there should be, by chance alone, one 
death coincidence. But the actual proportion 
established by the figures of the census was 
equivalent to about 440 in 19,000, or 440 times 
the probable number, and this when the cal- 
culation was based only on death coincidences 
occurring within from one to twelve hours 
of the time of death. Actually, a large frac- 
tion of the 32 cases accepted as sufficiently 
authenticated represented hallucinations ex- 
perienced within an hour of the time of 



182 Appendix II 

death, and for these the improbability of 
chance occurrence was obviously 12 times 
greater. With such a wide margin of differ- 
ence the committee felt justified in declaring: 
^^ Between deaths and the apparition of the 
dying person a connection exists which is not 
due to chance/' 

What, then, is the connection? To quote 
from F. W. H. Myers's explanatory comment 
on the report: 

"The explanation of chance coincidence 
being thus put out of court, the opponent of a 
telepathic or other supernormal explanation 
must maintain one of three other hypotheses. 
(1) He may assert that the coincidences have 
been exaggerated to a much greater extent 
than the committee allowed for; which argu- 
ment can only be met by reference to the 
evidence — given fully in the report — for 
the various cases. (2) He may suppose that 
they were specially sought after by the col- 
lectors and illegitimately introduced into the 
collection to a much larger extent in propor- 
tion to non-coincidental cases than was al- 
allowed for. Our reply would be that in 26 
of the total number of death coincidences, 
the collectors reported that they did not know 



The Census of Hallucinations 183 

of the case beforehand, and therefore could 
not have selected it to include. Sixteen of 
these cases are printed in the report, so that 
the evidence for them can be studied. (3) 
Admitting that death coincidences really exist, 
and are too frequent to be attributed to 
chance, it may be argued that the causal 
connection between hallucination and death 
is not telepathic, but consists in a condition 
favorable to hallucination being produced in 
the percipient in some normal way by the cir- 
cumstances of the case; for instance, by 
anxiety about the dying person. There is 
some evidence in the report that mental 
tension, anxiety, or other emotional causes 
are to some extent favorable to hallucinations, 
and if a hallucination occurs, its form is likely 
to be determined by whatever subject the 
percipient is thinking of. But such a cause 
could only produce a death coincidence if the 
percipient were aware of the dying person's 
condition, and in many of the cases reported 
(ten of which are printed in the report) the 
percipient had not even heard of the dying 
person's illness. It was therefore impossible 
that anxiety should have caused the halluci- 
nation in those cases, and even in cases where 



184 Appendix II 

some degree of anxiety existed, the closeness 
of the coincidence is inadequately accounted 
for by it. . . . 

*'I must add that while this argument from 
statistics and percentages — capable as it is 
at once of accurate estimation and indefinite 
extension — constitutes technically the strong- 
est support of the thesis of causal connection 
between deaths and apparitions, it is yet by 
no means the only support, nor even the most 
practically convincing. Those deaths and 
those apparitions are not mere simple momen- 
tary facts — as though we were dealing with 
two clocks which struck simultaneously. Each 
is a complex occurrence, and the correspond- 
ence is often much more than a mere coin- 
cidence of time alone. Sometimes, indeed, 
the alleged coincidence is so detailed and 
intimate that, if the evidence for a single case 
is fully believed, that case is enough to carry 
conviction.'' ^ 

Myers himself, like all others who see in the 
spiritistic hypothesis the only satisfactory ex- 
planation of the data thus laboriously gathered, 
would insist that the hallucinations reported 

1 " Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death," Vol. I, 
pp. 573-4. 



The Census of Hallucinations 185 

were proof of the survival of personality. 
But, as the writer hopes he has made suffi- 
ciently clear in the sixth chapter of this book, 
the impossibility of adducing evidence that 
the hallucinations were not telepathically pro- 
duced from the subconscious mind of the dying 
persons before they passed from earth, and 
remained submerged in the subconscious mind 
of the percipients, practically vitiates the 
argument from spirit influence. Whatever 
the causal connection, however, it may hardly 
be doubted that the statistics of this unique 
census have a momentous bearing on the 
question of the existence and operation of 
mental faculties other than those employed 
in the routine of life. 



APPENDIX III 

Hypnotism and the Drink Habit 

Perhaps no more urgent problem confronts 
the medical world than the cure of alcoholism, 
its importance lying in the preponderating 
role played by the drink habit in the weaken- 
ing of the race as well as the destruction of the 
afflicted individual. All authorities unite in 
declaring that alcoholism holds a foremost 
place among the direct causes of insanity. 
The psychiatrist Morel rated it next to he- 
redity in this respect; and indirectly it still 
further extends its baneful influence by trans- 
mitting to the posterity of drunkards an in- 
herited taint which may find expression in one 
or more of many forms — true insanity, idiocy, 
epilepsy, hysteria, future inebriety, criminality, 
etc. Added to this is the economic loss, to 
say nothing of the personal suffering entailed 
on the dipsomaniac himself and his relatives. 
It is, of course, out of the question to expect 
that a means will be found for the total eradi- 

186 



Hypnotism and the Drink Habit 187 

cation of drunkenness; but it is imperative 
to check drink's ravages so far as is humanly 
possible, and for this purpose no method of 
treatment as yet discovered seems to hold 
such promise as the hypnotic. 

For some reason, not definitely ascertained, 
dipsomaniacs are peculiarly susceptible to 
hypnotism, at times responding to the cura- 
tive suggestions of the operator with almost 
incredible readiness. Such has been the ex- 
perience of all psychopathologists, from the 
founders of the Paris and Nancy schools of 
hypnotism to the most recent practitioners. 
In this, it may incidentally be noted, dipso- 
maniacs differ markedly from victims of the 
morphine and cocaine habit. The cure of 
the latter is very difficult and often impossible, 
their entire system having seemingly become 
so demoralized as to extinguish even the 
recuperative energy of the subliminal self. 
But in the case of dipsomaniacs, given a fair 
family history and a habit of not too long a 
standing, the hypnotic method holds out every 
promise of a cure. 

There is hope, in fact, for even the con- 
firmed drunkard, with a black heredity and a 
record of years of indulgence. One of Dr. 



188 Appendix III 

Sidis's most striking cures was that of a man 
deriving an alcoholic tendency from both his 
father's and his mother's side, and so besotted 
that Dr. Sidis considered the case almost 
hopeless. But, to his amazement, he found 
a subliminal responsiveness of such vigor that 
this drunkard by inheritance was enabled to 
take his proper place in society sooner than 
many others on whom the vice apparently 
had a weaker hold. Similarly, Dr. J. Milne 
Bramwell, a pioneer English practitioner, re- 
ports a complete cure in the case of a man 
who, with a bad family history, averaged a 
spree a week for several years; also of one 
patient who had had three attacks of delirium 
tremens and seven of epilepsy — probably, 
however, not true epilepsy but hystero-epi- 
lepsy. Another case of Dr. BramwelFs, re- 
ported by him in the June, 1900, issue of the 
*' Proceedings of the Society for the Study of 
Inebriety," may advantageously be described 
in his own words : 

"Mrs. C, aged forty-four, November 23, 
1894. Family history of alcoholism. At the 
age of twenty the patient began to have 
frequent hysterical attacks, and for these 
stimulants were prescribed in rather large 



Hypnotism and the Drink Habit 189 

quantities. Two years later she began to 
take stimulants in excess, but did not do so 
frequently, and rarely became intoxicated. 
From thirty-two to thirty-six she was an 
abstainer; then commenced taking stimulants 
again, and attacks of genuine dipsomania 
soon appeared. The patient suffered from 
an almost constant craving for alcohol. She 
was, however, a woman of culture, refine- 
ment, and high principle, devoted to her 
husband and children, and the idea of giving 
way to drink was in every way abhorrent to 
her. She therefore struggled with all her 
might against the temptation; resisted it suc- 
cessfully for a week or two, then the craving 
became irresistible, and a drinking bout fol- 
lowed. I hypnotized Mrs. C. thirty times, 
from November 23, 1894, to February 14, 
1895. From the very beginning of the treat- 
ment she abstained from stimulants, but the 
craving, although much diminished, did not 
entirely disappear for some months. Up to 
the present date there has been absolutely 
no relapse." 

Thus, no matter what the condition of 
the dipsomaniac, it seems ^' never too late to 
mend"; although the conservative psycho- 



1 90 Appendix III 

pathologist does not pretend that in every 
case a permanent cure can be effected. Still, 
the percentage of permanent cures, as derived 
from the records of the cases treated by 
Drs. Sidis, Bramwell, and others, is astonish- 
ingly high. And, what is of no small im- 
portance to most people, the treatment may 
be given without interruption to the patient's 
business. 



APPENDIX IV 

Hypnoidization 

In an interesting series of articles contributed 
to the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 
(issues of March 14 to April 11, 1907), Dr. 
Boris Sidis gives an outline account of his 
latest psychopathological investigations, and 
incidentally explains the method of hypnoidi- 
zation developed and utilized by him. It is 
quoted here for the purpose of affording the 
reader an understanding of the nature of the 
hypnoidic state and the means by which it is 
produced. 

''In order to get at the dissociated subcon- 
scious states," writes Dr. Sidis, ''I have for 
many years employed a method which gives 
uniformly excellent results. I wish to attract 
the attention of the medical profession to 
this method of hypnoidization, as it is not only 
of theoretical importance for the purposes of 
psychopathological analysis, but it is possibly 
of still greater value for practical therapeutic 

191 



192 Appendix IV 

purposes. This is all the more requisite, as 
recently some medical men have confused 
the method of hypnoidization with that of 
Breuer and Freud on the one hand and with 
Janet's method of distraction on the other. 
The three methods are radically different and 
are based on widely different principles. The 
nature of the states obtained by the method 
of hypnoidization, as well as the character of 
the results, differ fundamentally from those 
of the other two methods. . . . 

"It is on [the] general laws and nature of 
relation of the personal consciousness to the 
subconscious that I have based my method 
of hypnoidization. In order to reach the 
dissociated mental states we have to lay bare 
the subconscious, and this can be effected by 
the conditions requisite for the induction of 
normal or abnormal suggestibility, conditions 
which bring about a disaggregation of con- 
sciousness. In cases, therefore, where hypno- 
sis is not practicable and the subconscious 
has to be reached, we can effect a disaggrega- 
tion of consciousness and thus produce an 
allied subconscious state by putting the patient 
under the conditions of normal suggestibility: 
fixation of attention, distraction, monotony. 



Hypnoidization 193 

limitation of the voluntary movements, limita- 
tion of the field of vision, inhibition, and im- 
mediate execution. 

"'This is precisely what the method of hyp- 
noidization consists in. The patient is asked 
to close his eyes and keep as quiet as possible, 
without, however, making any special effort 
to put himself in such a state. He is then 
asked to attend to some stimulus such as read- 
ing or singing (or to the monotonous beats 
of a metronome). When the reading is over, 
the patient, with his eyes shut, is asked to 
repeat it and tell what comes into his mind 
during the reading, or during the repetition, 
or immediately after it. Sometimes the pa- 
tient is simply asked to tell the nature of 
ideas and images that have entered his mind. 
This should be carried out in a very quiet 
place, and the room, if possible, should be 
darkened so as not to disturb the patient and 
bring him out of the state in which he has 
been put. 

"As modifications of the same method, 
the patient is asked to fixate his attention on 
some object while at the same time listening 
to the beats of a metronome; the patient's 
eyes are then closed; he is to keep very quiet. 



194 Appendix IV 

while the metronome or some other monoto- 
nous stimulus is kept on going. After some 
time, when his respirations and pulse are 
found somewhat lowered, and he declares 
that he thinks of nothing in particular, he is 
asked to concentrate his attention on a sub- 
ject closely relating to the symptoms of the 
malady or to the submerged subconscious 
states. 

"The patient, again, may be asked to keep 
very quiet, to move or change position as 
little as possible, and is then required to look 
steadily into a glass of water on a white back- 
ground, with a light shining through the con- 
tents of the glass; a mechanism producing 
monotonous sounds is set going, and after a 
time, when the patient is observed to have 
become unusually quiet, he is asked to tell 
what he thinks in regard to a subject relating 
to his symptoms. He may be asked to write 
the stray ideas down, if speaking aloud dis- 
turbs the induced states favorable to the 
emergence of the dissociated mental states. 

"In some cases it is suflBcient to put the 
patient in a very quiet condition; have his 
eyes shut and command him to think hard of 
the particular dissociated states. This mostly 



Hypnoidization 195 

succeeds in the case of patients who are also 
somnambulists. 

*'In short, the method of hypnoidization is 
not necessarily fixed, it admits of many modi- 
fications; it is highly pliable and can be ad- 
justed to the type of case as ,well as adapted 
to the idiosyncrasies of the patient's individu- 
ality. This method of hypnoidization has 
nothing in common with Freud's method, nor 
with Janet's method of distraction. Freud's 
method is based on the course of normal 
associative activity, while the method of 
hypnoidization is based essentially on the 
production of dissociation by inducing a 
slight state of disaggregation of consciousness. 
From Janet's method of distraction, that of 
hypnoidization differs fundamentally in that 
it is not at all based on distraction, but on the 
conditions of monotony, and sensori-motor 
limitations. In contrast to Janet's method 
of distraction, hypnoidization may be charac- 
terized as the method of monotony. 

"What do we produce by the method of 
hypnoidization ? We produce a peculiar state 
which, for the lack of a better term, I desig- 
nate as 'hypnoidal.' What is the hypnoidal 
state? The hypnoidal state is essentially a 



196 Appendix IV 

borderland state. The subject is apparently 
awake and seems to be in full possession of 
all his powers, and still he is more closely in 
touch with the dissociated experiences than 
he is otherwise in the full waking state. Per- 
haps the subwaking state would possibly be 
an apt term for the hypnoidal condition. 
The subject seems to hover between the con- 
scious and the subconscious, somewhat in the 
same way as in the half -drowsy condition we 
hover between wakefulness and sleep. The 
hypnoidal state is not a stable condition; it 
keeps on fluctuating from moment to moment; 
now falling more deeply into a subconscious 
condition in which outlived experiences are 
easily aroused, or again rising to the level of 
waking states. In such conditions the patient 
often tells you, ^something has come — but 
it is gone.' The hypnoidal state has changed, 
it has become lighter, and the dissociated 
moments have become again submerged. 
There is a constant struggle going on in the 
hunting out of the stray dissociated systems. 
The state brought about by hypnoidization is 
essentially a transient, evanescent, mental 
disaggregation of the personal consciousness 
from the reflex subconsciousness. The hypnoi- 



Hypnoidization 197 

dal state borders closely on light hypnosis; 
and still it is not exactly a hypnotic state and 
may be regarded as an intermediate state. 
In a series of experiments on the nature of 
sleep of lower animals as well as of infants 
and adults, now being carried on by me at 
the physiological laboratory of Harvard Medi- 
cal School and in my own laboratory, the 
facts tend to indicate that the hypnoidal state 
is intermediary between hypnosis and sleep 
on the one hand and the waking state on the 
other. ... 

"The hypnoidal state may either lead to 
sleep or to hypnosis. The close relationship 
of the hypnoidal state and of hypnosis is some- 
times forcibly brought to the attention of the 
experimenter. Some patients while in the 
hypnoidal state are observed to become un- 
usually quiet, less talkative, become relaxed, 
and after a time a distinctly cataleptic con- 
dition of the extremities may be observed. 
The patient has apparently passed into hyp- 
nosis. In most of the cases the hypnosis 
is of very brief duration, while in a few cases 
the hypnosis may become lasting [Dr. Sidis 
means lasting throughout that particular treat- 
ment] and deep. On the other hand, in many 



198 Appendix IV 

cases the subject falls into a sleeping state 
without as much as touching on hypnosis. . . . 
The subwaking hypnoidal state, like sleep 
and hypnosis, may be of various depth and 
duration; it may range from the fully awaking 
consciousness and again may closely approach 
and even merge into sleep or hypnosis. The 
same patient may at various times reach dif- 
ferent levels, and hence subconscious experi- 
ences which are inaccessible at one time may 
become revealed at some subsequent time, 
when the patient happens to go into a deeper 
level of the hypnoidal state. 

''On account of the instability of the hyp- 
noidal state, and because of the continous 
fluctuation and variation of the depth of its 
level, the subconscious dissociated experiences 
come up in bits and scraps, and often may 
lack the sense of familiarity and recognition. 
The patient often loses the train of subcon- 
scious associations ; there is a constant struggle 
to maintain this highly unstable hypnoidal 
state, and one has again and again to return 
to the same subconscious train started into 
activity for a brief interval of time. One 
must pick his way among streams of disturb- 
ing associations before the dissociated sub- 



Hypnoidization 199 

conscious experiences can be synthetized into 
a whole, reproducing representatively the 
original experience [for example, the shock 
which caused Mr. R's hands to tremble] 
that has given rise to the whole train of symp- 
toms. The hypnoidal state may sometimes 
reproduce the original experience which, at 
first struggling up in a broken, distorted form 
and finally becoming synthetized, gives rise 
to a full attack. The symptoms of the 
malady turn out to be portions, bits, and chips 
of past experiences which have become dis- 
sociated, subconscious, giving rise to a dis- 
aggregated subconsciousness. The method of 
hypnoidization and the hypnoidal states in- 
duced by it enable us to trace the history and 
etiology of the symptoms and also to effect 
a synthesis and a cure/' 



APPENDIX V 

Spiritism vs. Telepathy 

In rejecting the telepathic and accepting 
the spiritistic hypothesis as the only one which 
adequately explains the case of Mrs. Piper, 
both Dr. Hodgson and Professor Hyslop have 
stated in detail the considerations influencing 
them to adopt this view. Their statements 
constitute a most searching criticism of the 
telepathic hypothesis, but the writer per- 
sonally deems it by no means convincing. 

It is summed up concisely and clearly in 
Professor Hyslop's book *' Science and a 
Future Life." To begin with. Professor Hyslop 
raises some general objections against falling 
back on telepathy as a means of explaining 
phenomena of the Piper type. It is improper, 
he asserts, to apply it as an explanatory 
hypothesis, because its validity is not uni- 
versally accepted by scientists, and because 
even those who regard telepathy as proved 
have no knowledge of its laws and conditions. 

200 



Spiritism vs. Telepathy 201 

"The scientific world generally/' he says, 
*'has not accepted it with any assurance as 
yet, and even where it is accepted there is 
no knowledge whatever of its laws and con- 
ditions. The scientific man will insist that 
these laws and conditions must be definitely 
ascertained before applying the hypothesis 
upon any large scale/' Obviously, if this 
objection were sound, it would bar out the 
spiritistic as well as the telepathic hypothesis 
as a means of explaining psychical phenomena. 
For certainly, the ''scientific world generally" 
does not accept spirit action as proved, and 
"even where it is accepted" there is, to put it 
mildly, far less knowledge of the laws and 
conditions of spirit action than of the laws 
and conditions of telepathy. As a matter of 
fact, some sort of a hypothesis is necessary 
to arrive at an understanding of the Piper 
and kindred phenomena; just as some sort 
of a hypothesis is always necessary to appre- 
hend the truth with regard to any facts 
whatsoever that have not been definitely cata- 
logued, as it were. And the hypotheses of 
fraud, guessing, and chance coincidence hav- 
ing been proved inadequate to explain all 
the facts of the Piper case, there would seem 



202 Appendix V 

to be left, as Professor Hyslop himself stoutly 
maintains, only the alternative hypotheses of 
telepathy or spirit action. "'The man who 
does not admit telepathy, at least has no way 
of evading the spiritistic hypothesis." 

But, he proceeds, conceding that telepathy 
has been proved, it is inadequate to explain 
many of the Piper phenomena, because ^'so 
far as it is scientifically supported'' it repre- 
sents only ""what the person communicating 
is thinking about at the time the thought is 
received by another.'' That is to say. Pro- 
fessor Hyslop would limit telepathic action 
to present, active mental states; albeit he 
guardedly admits that there are facts which 
"suggest" its extension to include subcon- 
scious mental states. Here the writer would 
directly take issue with Professor Hyslop ; for, 
as has been stated on an earlier page, it seems 
to him that if the labors of Myers, Sidgwick, 
Gurney, and Professor Hyslop himself, prove 
anything with regard to telepathy, they prove 
that it is a faculty not of the waking con- 
sciousness but of the subconsciousness, and 
that its operation is far from being limited to 
*' present, active mental states." Among much 
else that points unmistakably in this direc- 



Spiritism vs. Telepathy 203 

tion, it is sufficient to cite the many instances 
of ''deferred percipience'' on record in the 
archives of the Society for Psychical Research, 
cases Hke those of the Rev. Clarence Godfrey 
and like some of the achievements of Miss 
Angus as reported by Andrew Lang. 

Admitting, however, for the sake of argu- 
ment, that this broader view of telepathy is 
justified by the facts. Professor Hyslop further 
contends that it is still insufficient to explain 
the Piper phenomena, unless the advocate 
of the telepathic hypothesis is prepared to 
assert that telepathy has an omniscient quality. 
''No telepathy,'' he declares, "which does 
not extend in some way to all living minds 
and memories, can even approach an explana- 
tion of such cases [as that of Mrs. Piper]. 
So far as I know such a telepathy may be 
possible, but there is no adequate scientific 
evidence for it. I do not know even one iota 
of evidence for it that can be scientifically 
accepted. Moreover, it represents a process 
far more incredible than spirits, and no in- 
telligent man will resort to the belief in it in 
any haste. Only a superstitious prejudice 
against the possibility of spirits will induce a 
man to betray such credulity as the acceptance 



204 Appendix V 

of such a universal telepathy. A man that 
can believe it in the present state of human 
knowledge can believe anything, and ought to 
be tolerant of those who have a lurking sus- 
picion that there might be such a thing as a 
discarnate spirit/' 

Now, this argument from omniscience has 
long been a favorite weapon with opponents 
of the telepathic hypothesis. But it rests 
altogether on an assumption which the advo- 
cate of telepathy does not regard as justifiable. 
It is the assumption that omniscience is a 
necessary factor in the case, if telepathy is 
to be invoked to explain such seemingly 
supernormal manifestations as are vouch- 
safed through the mediumship of Mrs. Piper. 
Let us look into the matter more closely, 
taking for our point of approach some of 
Professor Hyslop's own experiences with the 
celebrated New England medium. 

''In one question,'' Professor Hyslop reports, 
in his ''Science and a Future Life," "the 
' communicator,' purporting to be my father, 
asked 'Where is George.^' and said, 'I often 
think of him, but I do not worry any more 
about him,' and in a moment came, as if 
struck by a sudden recollection, 'Do you 



Spiritism vs. Telepathy 205 

remember Tom, and what has he done with 
him? I mean the horse.' My father had 
worried about this brother, George, in con- 
nection with business matters, and we had 
an excitable horse by the name of Tom that 
father would not sell because of this tempera- 
ment, and hence pensioned him, so to speak, 
on the farm, and when the horse died my 
brother George buried him. This last fact I 
did not know. 

"At one sitting I asked about Robert 
Cooper, a living cousin of mine, the object 
being to test some false statements made 
about another Cooper referred to by myself 
at an earlier experiment. The answer came 
that he intended to mention him, and the 
demand, 'Tell me about the mortgage.' This 
cousin at the time of my father's death had 
a heavy mortgage on his farm and my father 
knew nothing about it. But my cousin, 
Robert McClellan, helped Mr. Cooper out of 
his difficulty, and a year later died, and was 
one of the 'communicators' at this series of 
sittings. 

''I also asked about a Harper Crawford, 
who was an old neighbor of father's, and the 
reply was a statement that he had frequently 



206 Appendix V 

tried to mention him, and the question whether 
'they were doing anything about the church/ 
I asked what church was referred to, and the 
reply was that 'they have put an organ in it/ 
I asked if he meant a certain church, knowing 
that this Harper Crawford was a member of 
it, and the reply in italics was, 'Yes, I do/ 

"I made inquiries in the West and found 
that an organ had been put in this church and 
that Harper Crawford, being opposed to 
instrumental music in religious worship, had 
left the church on account of this act. I did 
not know this latter fact, and do not recall 
any knowledge that the organ had been put 
in the church/' 

For our purpose, these four paragraphs 
illustrate sufficiently well the characteristics of 
Mrs. Piper's mediumship. They show that, 
while entranced, it is her custom — or, more 
strictly, the custom of her "controls'' — to 
cite as proof of the personal identity of the 
alleged communicator facts of which her sitter 
has no conscious personal knowledge as well as 
facts of which he is consciously aware. In 
view of this, and bearing in mind that this 
has been his experience in not simply one or 
two, but in many seances with Mrs. Piper, 



Spiritism vs. Telepathy 207 

and has also been the experience of many 
other sitters, Professor Hyslop feels justified 
in claiming that if telepathy be the explana- 
tion, then telepathy must be able to have 
knowledge of the contents of all living minds. 
He is indeed justified in adding that there is 
^'no adequate scientific evidence'' for such 
telepathy. But the fact of the matter is that 
there is no need to postulate such a quality 
of omniscience in order to explain the Piper 
case on a telepathic basis. The relationship 
is merely between the medium and her sitter, 
not between the medium and "'all living 
minds." All that it is necessary to assume is 
that in some way, telepathically or otherwise, 
the facts which the medium adduces have 
become lodged in her sitter's subconscious- 
ness, where the medium gets at them telepath- 
ically. The ease and correctness with which 
she gets at them will, of course, vary accord- 
ing as the conditions for the exercise of her 
telepathic powers are favorable or otherwise. 
What are favorable, and what unfavorable, 
conditions is not as yet known, or even con- 
jectured, with any definiteness; but, judging 
from Mrs. Piper's career, it seems certain that 
at least one favoring condition is the sys- 



208 Appendix V 

tematic cultivation of the telepathic faculty. 
The reports of those who have investigated her 
show that the quality of her mediumship is 
to-day far more impressive than it was only 
a few years ago, and it then showed a marked 
improvement over the mediumship of the 
early, the "'Phinuit,'' regime. 

To come back, however, to Professor Hys- 
lop's criticism of the telepathic hypothesis. 
Following the argument from omniscience, 
he ventures the startling suggestion that if 
telepathy be a fact it may itself be due to 
spirit action, and that, quite possibly, there 
may be telepathy between the living and the 
dead as well as between the living and the 
living. In other words, that telepathy may 
be the very process by which discarnate spirits 
communicate with spirits still in the iflesh. 
Thus he would make telepathy subserve, 
instead of harass, spiritism. But this is not 
really an objection to the telepathic hypothesis, 
save so far as it would invest it with a super- 
natural significance and thus damage its 
credibility as a fact in nature. Before assum- 
ing that telepathy is either operated by spirit 
agency, or is the process by which discarnate 
spirits communicate with their living friends. 



Spiritism vs. Telepathy 209 

it is obviously necessary to prove that there 
are discarnate spirits. Accordingly Professor 
Hyslop, as a critic of the telepathic hypothesis, 
is on sounder ground when he turns from this 
last general consideration to sundry specific 
objections against believing that telepathy 
between living minds is an adequate explana- 
tion of the phenomena in question. 

Certain of these specific objections may con- 
veniently be considered together. One turns on 
the circumstance that the *^ communicators'' 
in the Piper seances show a happy knack in 
selecting such facts as are best calculated to 
prove personal identity. If this be due to 
telepathy alone, exclaims Professor Hyslop, 
then telepathy ^'has to possess the same 
selectiveness, and in fact, a far larger selective- 
ness in securing the facts than any selectiveness 
supposed of discarnate spirits. What is notice- 
able in the facts presented is their definite 
relevancy to the proof of the personal iden- 
tity of the deceased. Whether the deceased 
continue to exist or not, there can be no doubt 
as to who is meant by the facts, and if telepathy 
acquires them it certainly has an amazing 
power to select the right ones.'' 

Next, Professor Hyslop lays emphasis on 



210 Appendix V 

the fact that the statements made by , 
** communicators'' are frequently incorrecL 
This, he feels, would imply a singular limita- 
tion of the telepathic faculty. But ''the 
assumption simultaneously of limited and 
unlimited powers is not to be made hastily. 
We would expect such limitations of dis- 
carnate spirits, but hardly of a telepathy which 
is apparently omniscient and unlimited in its 
powers.'' Also, he calls attention to the fact 
that during a seance there frequently are 
changes of "communicators," changes which 
he thinks are only what is to be expected on 
the spiritistic hypothesis, but which are quite 
incompatible with the telepathic. Another 
objection, akin to this, arises from the varying 
ability of the different ''communicators" to 
give proof of personal identity. Some send 
good evidential messages, others can do so 
only imperfectly. "This simulation of what 
we should most naturally expect of spirits 
ought not to characterize telepathy." 

To these four objections Professor Hyslop 
adds a fifth of similar character, one which 
he evidently considers the most deadly shaft 
in his critical quiver. And, indeed, not a few 
regard it as an insuperable obstacle to the 



Spiritism vs. Telepathy 211 

telepathic hypothesis. Its basis is the trivial- 
ity of the facts communicated through the 
medium. "I must insist/' says Professor 
Hyslop, in a statement which presents the 
argument as clearly as could be desired, "'that 
the triviality of the facts is absolutely incom- 
patible with the assumption of the enormous 
powers of access to living memories which the 
advocate of telepathy makes and must make. 
If the medium can reach out into the whole 
world of living consciousness and memory and 
select from this infinite mass of experiences just 
the right ones to represent the personality of the 
deceased, it ought to get with ease all the impor- 
tant and elevated features of these person- 
alities, and not limit its access to the trivial. 
Personal characteristics ought to be produced 
in their perfection, and the moral, religious or 
irreligious, political, literary, philosophical 
characteristics of any one ought to be pro- 
ducible at will, instead of this distorted and 
confused mass of trivial incidents which we 
find." 

As Professor Hyslop frankly admits, this 
argument from triviality may be utilized to 
attack the spiritistic no less than the telepathic 
hypothesis. But he cleverly wards it off from 



212 Appendix V 

the spiritistic hypothesis by alleging that 
trivial facts are given because it is precisely 
by trivial facts that personal identity may best 
be established. ''If any one will stop long 
enough to think and to ask what incidents he 
would choose to prove his own identity over 
a telephone or telegraph wire he will readily 
discover that his spontaneous choice would 
be the most trivial incidents possible/' And 
"'we must not forget that the ostensible char- 
acter of the experiments is the proof of per- 
sonal identity. The 'Imperator' group of 
trance personalities, claiming to be spirits, 
manage their side of the work with definite 
reference to this proof of personal identity, 
and exhibit the same understanding of the 
problem that we insist upon. We cannot 
interest ourselves in any side issues of intelli- 
gence and spirit life until we have proved the 
personal identity of deceased persons, and, as 
nothing but trivial incidents in sufficient quan- 
tity will prove this, we must recognize that 
the data professing to be spiritistic in their 
origin, represent the most rational and scien- 
tific conception of the problem.'' 

In this last quotation, unfortunately for 
Professor Hyslop and for those who agree with 



Spiritism vs. Telepathy 213 

his view of the Piper case, lurks the clue to 
the solution of the difficulties he has just raised. 
The alleged discarnate spirits, he says, recog- 
nize the necessity of proving their identity, 
and hence supply the sort of facts commonly 
utilized by living persons as proof of identity. 
Exactly. And they would do precisely the 
same thing on the supposition that they were 
not discarnate spirits at all but, as the tele- 
pathist believes the evidence goes to show, 
were simply secondary personalities that had 
taken form and character in Mrs. Piper's 
organism, just as secondary personalities take 
form and character in the organism of a per- 
son who is hypnotized. In the last analysis, 
there is no difference between the trance state 
into which Mrs. Piper goes during a seance, 
and the trance state of any hypnotic subject. 
The distinction simply is that she seems to be 
constitutionally so nervously unstable that 
she falls spontaneously into the hypnotic con- 
dition. Now a hypnotized person, as was 
pointed out on a previous page, will enact 
with seemingly preternatural fidelity any role 
suggested to him by the hypnotist. By so 
much the more should Mrs. Piper, with her 
exceptional autohypnotic gift, be able to re- 



214 Appendix V 

spond to suggestion and in her varying secon- 
dary personalities fill roles suggested to her, 
however unconsciously or subconsciously, by 
those who have so long been experimenting 
with her. Remember F, W. H. Myers's 
criticism of the hypnotized patients of the 
Salpetriere: "'One feels that the Salpetriere 
has, in a sense, been smothered in its own 
abundance. The richest collection of hyster- 
ics which the world has ever seen, it has 
also (one fears) become a kind of unconscious 
school of these unconscious prophets — a 
milieu where the new arrival learns insensibly 
from the very atmosphere of experiment 
around her to adopt her own reflexes or re- 
sponses to the subtly divined expectations of 
the operator/' 

The case seems to be identical with respect 
to Mrs. Piper. When Professor James dis- 
covered her, nearly a quarter of a century ago, 
she was simply one of numerous mediums 
operating in and about the city of Boston. 
There were features in her mediumship, how- 
ever, which appeared to him to merit in- 
vestigation; and accordingly the Society for 
Psychical Research, through Dr. Hodgson, 
took her in hand. The results, at first, were 



Spiritism vs. Telepathy 215 

comparatively meager and often disappointing. 
It was noticed that her ''control/' the so- 
called ''Dr. Phinuit/' was given to asking 
leading questions and to making glaringly false 
statements. With the arrival of "George 
Pelham" there was a marked improvement 
in the mediumship, and a greater improve- 
ment from the day the "Imperator'' group of 
"controls'' took a hand in affairs. All this 
time Mrs. Piper had been the subject of 
scientific investigation, had been in the com- 
pany of zealous experimenters. Is it not pos- 
sible, nay, is it not probable, that like the new 
arrivals at the Salpetriere she "learned insen- 
sibly from the very atmosphere of experiment 
around her, to adopt her responses to the 
subtly divined expectations of the operator.?" 
In her case, the operators felt that the great 
thing to be established was proof of personal 
identity, and that it was therefore necessary 
for alleged communicating discarnate spirits 
to cite trivial incidents connected with their 
earthly career. In response, the secondary 
personality which had assumed the character 
of George Pelham, Professor Hyslop's father, 
or whoever it might be, would flash at the 
operators trivial facts extracted telepathically 



216 Appendix V 

from the depths of their own minds. There 
would thus be the very selectiveness which 
Professor Hyslop maintains is incredible on 
the telepathic hypothesis; and there would 
also be the changes in '"communicators" 
which he similarly deems destructive of an 
explanation on the basis of telepathy between 
living minds. It might be, too, that expecta- 
tion on the part of the operators is the explana- 
tion of the '"mistakes and confusion'' which 
Professor Hyslop insists are only what is to 
be expected on the spiritistic hypothesis. If 
Mrs. Piper's secondary personalities are posing 
as discarnate spirits, and have had all these 
years to learn what is and what is not expected 
of them as spirits, surely they should be able 
to fill the bill. The chances are, however, that, 
as was suggested a moment ago, the mistakes 
and confusions are more likely due to the, as 
yet unascertained, limitations under which 
telepathy operates. 

This view of the case finds strong corrobora- 
tion in the actions of the '" controls" of mediums 
who have not been subjected to the experi- 
mental environment with which Mrs. Piper 
is familiar. If you go to a seance conducted 
by a trance medium who is at large, so to 



Spiritism vs. Telepathy 217 

speak, you will witness phenomena conspicu- 
ously different from those reported by Dr. 
Hodgson and Professor Hyslop. There is no 
desperate endeavor to prove personal identity, 
no harping on petty incidents in the life-time 
of the alleged communicating spirit. Instead 
of statements like ''Do you remember Tom, 
and what has he done with him ? I mean the 
horse," or '^Tell me about the mortgage," 
or ''They have put an organ in the church," 
the sitters are given an abundance of comfort- 
ing and inspiring sentiments, such as "Do not 
mourn for me, I am happier here," "It is all 
sunshine and brightness, I never dreamed that 
the future would be as glorious as this," "I 
am always near you, and your interests are 
very dear to me." Unlike the scientifically 
educated secondary personalities of Mrs. Piper, 
the "controls" of these mediums at large do 
not properly appreciate the supreme impor- 
tance of proving their identity. They are con- 
fronted not by scientific investigators but by 
anxious men and women, mourning their be- 
loved and longing to get into touch with the 
spirit world to which they hope and believe 
that their beloved have gone. In accordance 
with the laws of suggestion, what they expect 



218 Appendix V 

they receive; together, not infrequently, with 
just enough in the way of personal references 
to disabuse them of any lingering idea that 
they may after all not be hearing from the 
dead. 

On this view of the case, again, disappears 
Professor Hyslop's final objection to the tele- 
pathic hypothesis . Since the phenomena under 
discussion point so unmistakably to the sur- 
vival of human personality after bodily death, 
he affirms that "'we cannot well escape belief 
in spirits unless we suppose that subconscious 
actions are rather fiendish in their simulation 
of spirits after acquiring information that so 
evidently points to the persons represented. 
The psychological complications involved in a 
telepathic hypothesis that completely simulates 
spirits, must make any man pause when try- 
ing to estimate the nature of unconscious 
mental action. It would have to be regarded 
as supremely devilish in its character.'' But 
what about the fiendishness and the devilish- 
ness if the complete and, to Professor Hyslop, 
convincing simulation of discarnate spirits is 
ultimately ascribable to suggestion on the 
part of those with whom the medium comes 
into contact.^ There is no occasion to hurl 



Spiritism vs. Telepathy 219 

epithets at ** unconscious mental action." All 
that is necessary is to recognize that, like 
"conscious mental action/' it can bring about 
baneful or beneficial results — can develop to 
a phenomenal degree, on the one hand medi- 
ums like Mrs. Piper who invest their telepathic 
performances with a spiritistic setting, and on 
the other hand mediums like Miss Angus who 
exhibit powers on a par with those of Mrs. 
Piper, but as Mr. Lang tersely puts it, ^^with 
no aid from the dead/' 



APPENDIX VI 

Hints for Further Reading 

For the general subject of personality no 
book can be studied to better advantage 
than F. W. H. Myers's ''Human Person- 
ality and Its Survival of Bodily Death/' 
mention of which has so frequently been 
made in the preceding pages. As originally 
published (1903) it consists of two large vol- 
umes, but an abridged edition (1907) con- 
taining the essentials is now available in a 
single volume. Whenever possible, however, 
the original edition should be consulted. It 
treats in a graphic and luminous way all 
phases of the abnormal and seemingly super- 
normal in human life — disintegrations of 
personality, the nature of genius, the phe- 
nomena of sleep and hypnotism, sensory and 
motor automatisms, hallucinations, possession, 
etc. — and affords at once a panoramic and 
acutely analytical view of its important sub- 
ject. At the same time it needs to be read 



Hints for Further Reading 221 

with great critical caution, for Myers was a 
mystic and poet fully as much as a man of 
science, and his treatment throughout is 
colored by a distinct leaning towards the 
supernatural implications so easily connected 
with the more "mysterious" phenomena he 
discusses. Especially is this evident in the 
concluding chapters, where he marshals the 
proof supporting the theory that spirit com- 
munication is an established fact, and that 
the question of survival is therefore definitely 
settled. Still, as has already been said, what- 
ever opinion be formed of the author's con- 
clusions there can be no doubt that he has 
made a most — one is tempted to write, the 
most — searching examination. An extremely 
valuable feature of his work is the glossary in 
which he defines, in language intelligible to 
a tyro, the technical terms that he finds it 
necessary to use. 

Like all writers on the subject of personality 
Myers himself is dependent, in large measure, 
on the material to be found in the "' Journal" 
and the "Proceedings" of the Society for 
Psychical Research. These constitute a mine 
of information in which, just as in a veritable 
mine, not all the ore is of equal quality. It 



222 Appendix VI 

has been the hope of the present writer, how- 
ever, to assist the student in acquiring the 
correct view point for scrutinizing the contents 
of this vast repository, which holds, it must be 
said, far more data relating to the super- 
normal than to the abnormal. Especially 
deserving of careful consideration are the 
volumes of the "Proceedings'' containing the 
reports on the telepathic experiments con- 
ducted under the society's auspices, the re- 
port on the census of hallucinations, the 
reports on the production of hallucinatory 
images by crystal-gazing and other means, 
the Hodgson and Hyslop reports on the Piper 
case, and the various articles on hypnotic 
phenomena. It might also be mentioned that 
the student will find, scattered through dif- 
ferent volumes of the "Proceedings," a clear 
presentation of the ideas which Myers after- 
wards elaborated in his great book. Those 
who cannot obtain access to the "Proceed- 
ings" may gain at least a partial view of their 
contents from the writings of James H. 
Hyslop, notably his "Science and a Future 
Life" (1905), "Enigmas of Psychical Re- 
search" (1906), and "The Borderland of 
Psychical Research" (1906). These consist 



Hints for Further Reading 223 

in large part of quotations from the "Pro- 
ceedings/' form as it were a psychical trilogy, 
and conduct the reader in an interesting way 
through the tortuous paths of the survival 
maze. They are written in a distinctly popu- 
lar vein, which is of course greatly in their 
favor from the standpoint of the general 
reader; but, as in the case of Myers's work, 
it is all too evident that their author inclines 
to the spiritistic hypothesis. None the less 
they convey an intelligent idea of the progress 
already achieved by psychical research, and 
the problems still challenging solution; and 
are valuable as dissipating erroneous ideas 
respecting the nature of the self. 

It would, in fact, be well to give them 
a thoughtful reading before attempting the 
perusal of ''Human Personality,'' the "Pro- 
ceedings," and the "Phantasms of the Living" 
-—a work which, produced in 1886 by Ed- 
mund Gurney and several collaborators, is 
still of prime importance. In the way of 
introductory literature attention should also 
be called to the writings of the late Thomson 
Jay Hudson, who approaches the subject 
from the standpoint of the avowed telepathist, 
and to whose criticisms of the spiritistic 



224 Appendix VI 

hypothesis the present writer feels himself 
greatly indebted. In especial the student is 
advised to consult ''The Law of Psychic 
Phenomena'' (1893), "A Scientific Demon- 
stration of the Future Life'' (1895), and ''The 
Evolution of the Soul" (1904). The last is a 
posthumous volume of essays giving in com- 
pact form the evidence in support of the 
telepathic as against the spiritistic hypothesis, 
and also dealing more generally with the chief 
problem of personality, which is also the con- 
cern of "The Law of Psychic Phenomena" 
and "A Scientific Demonstration of the Future 
Life." Dr. Hudson's other works include 
an original little treatise on "The Law of 
Mental Medicine," which, besides discussing 
more specifically the therapeutic possibilities 
latent in man himself, gives in a clear way its 
author's views on the nature of man. 

In quite another category, but still neces- 
sary to the student who would look at all sides 
of a question, are Joseph Jastrow's two books, 
"Fact and Fable in Psychology" (1901) and 
"The Subconscious" (1906). So far from 
accepting the conclusions set forth by the 
writers named above, and differing on essen- 
tial points from the psychopathologists whose 



Hints for Further Reading 225 

contributions have yet to be indicated. Pro- 
fessor Jastrow may be accepted as a repre- 
sentative champion of the orthodox concept 
of the self — admitting, in the Kght of the dis- 
coveries made by Liebeault, Charcot, Janet, 
Sidis, et al., that the subconscious Hfe is far 
richer and more varied than has hitherto been 
supposed, but denying that this involves any 
radical readjustment of belief respecting the 
nature of personality. More particularly in 
''The Subconscious'' does he seek to explain 
along conservative lines the weird eccentrici- 
ties of personality under the influence of 
sudden shocks, hysteria, hypnotism, etc. Un- 
fortunately, Professor Jastrow adopts such 
an indirect and technical diction that it is 
by no means easy for even the advanced 
student of psychology to follow him; and 
though the beginner ought to make an effort 
to grasp the views presented, he will likely 
turn with relief to the earlier and more read- 
able ''Fact and Fable in Psychology,'' or 
to another, but less imposing book, which 
may be recommended for introductory read- 
ing. This is Frank Sargent Hoffman's *^ Psy- 
chology and Common Life" (1903), in which 
the results of psychical research are simi- 



226 Appendix VI 

larly reviewed from the orthodox stand-point, 
but in a far easier vein than is the case with 
"The Subconscious.'' Among the psycholo- 
gists, however, no one has so brilKantly illu- 
minated the study of the self as William 
James, whose conclusions and the grounds 
on which they rest are fully and lucidly set 
down in his "Principles of Psychology" (1890), 
a work so well known that comment here 
would be superfluous. 

Turning to treatises by savants who have 
attacked the problems of personality chiefly 
from the standpoint of abnormal mental life, 
a twofold difiiculty immediately confronts 
the student. There are very few books deal- 
ing with the subject as a whole, and most of 
the existing literature, being addressed pri- 
marily to psychologists, psychiatrists, and 
physicians, is written in technical and diflScult 
terms. A clear and ample statement of the 
views of the psychopathologists, written on 
the scale and with the ease of "Human Per- 
sonality and Its Survival of Bodily Death," 
is in fact greatly needed. However, there are 
certain works which may fairly be regarded 
as introductory in character, and acquaintance 
with which will facilitate correct compre- 



Hints for Further Reading 227 

hension of the more elaborate and special 
studies. One of these is Boris Sidis's "'The 
Psychology of Suggestion" (1898), aptly de- 
scribed in its sub-title as ^^a research into the 
subconscious nature of man and society." 
This contains the first published account 
(barring articles in the Archives of Neurology 
and Psychopathology) of Dr. Sidis's investi- 
gations into human personality, and of his 
law of dissociation; and though not wholly 
adapted to the lay reader, it still is not unduly 
technical. Another introductory study, more 
readable but covering the ground less fully, 
is Morton Prince's "The Dissociation of a 
Personality" (1906). Concerned principally 
with the strange story of Miss Christine L. 
Beauchamp, Dr. Prince nevertheless affords 
a vivid glimpse of the psychopathological pic- 
ture of personality, doing this preparatory 
to a larger work which he purposes issuing 
under the title of "Problems in Abnormal 
Psychology," and which may possibly meet 
the need indicated above. Alfred Binet's 
"Alterations of Personality" (1896), as trans- 
lated by Helen Green Baldwin with notes 
by J. Mark Baldwin, is also to be recom- 
mended to beginners. Dealing mainly with 



228 Appendix VI 

the dissociations of hysterical patients, as 
observed in the Salpetriere, Dr. Binet at the 
same time gives a succinct review of the 
evidence tending to prove the instabihty and 
divisibiHty of the ego, so far as such evidence 
had been obtained up to the time his book 
was written. Incidentally, also, he makes an 
interesting application of the results of scien- 
tific research to explain, on a naturalistic 
basis, the phenomena of spiritistic medium- 
ship. 

The student should next master the con- 
tents of standard books on hypnotism — that 
wonderful instrument by which the phenomena 
of subconsciousness are laid bare. Some 
would recommend this as the initial step in 
the textual study of the psychopathologicai 
analysis of personality; but in the writer's 
judgment it may better be taken after an out- 
line view of the field of observation has been 
secured. J. Milne BramwelFs "'Hypnotism'' 
(1903) is a recent treatise by an authoritative 
writer, and embraces a capital survey of the 
history, theory, and practical application of 
this branch of the science of healing. With 
Dr. BramwelFs book may advantageously be 
read such other works as Albert Moll's 



Hints for Further Reading 229 

'^ Hypnotism'' (1890), Otto Wetterstrand's 
"Hypnotism and Its Application to Practical 
Medicine'' (1897), Charles Lloyd Tuckey's 
"Psycho-Therapeutics" (1889), H. Bernheim's 
''Suggestion and Its Applications to Thera- 
peutics" (1890), translation by C. A. Herter; 
and, if the reader be acquainted with the 
French language, A. A. Liebeault's "Thera- 
peutique Suggestive" (1891), the last word 
on the subject by the founder of the Nancy 
school, and E. Berillon's "'Histoire de I'Hyp- 
notisme Experimentale" (1902). 

All of these books are by followers of Lie- 
beault, and are valuable as giving a graphic 
presentation not merely of the nature and 
mechanism of hypnotism but of its practical 
therapeutic utility. For the views of the 
Paris school the student should consult, if 
possible, J. M. Charcot's "Oeuvres Com- 
pletes" (1886-90), published in nine volumes; 
or, if for any reason this be out of the question, 
Binet's already mentioned ''Alterations of 
Personality," and the more special studies by 
Pierre Janet, to be cited shortly. Charcot 
himself contributed to The Forum (1890) a 
brief account in English of his theories, 
methods, and results. If the reader desires 



230 Appendix VI 

to make a still more exhaustive study of 
hypnotism from the historical point of view, 
he can readily trace its evolution by ex- 
amining, in the order named, the following 
books: Franz Anton Mesmer's "'Memoire 
sur la Decouverte du Magnetisme'' (1779), 
the Marquis de Puysegur's ''Du Magnetisme 
Animal" (1807), and " Researches Physio- 
logiques sur I'Homme" (1811), Alexandre 
Bertrand's ''Du Magnetisme Animal en 
France'' (1826), J. C. Colquhoun's "Isis 
Revelata: An Inquiry into the Origin, 
Progress, and Present State of Animal Mag- 
netism'' (1833), John Elliotson's "Surgical 
Operations in the Mesmeric Trance" (1843), 
James Braid's "Neurypnology" (1843) and 
"Observations on Trance" (1850), James 
Esdaile's "Mesmerism in India" (1846) and 
"Natural and Mesmeric Clairvoyance" (1852), 
and A. A. Liebeault's "Du Sommeil et des 
Etats Analogues" (1866), containing the first 
statement of the views of the great psycho- 
pathologist of Nancy. The subsequent de- 
velopment of hypnotism is fully shown in the 
works already enumerated. 

With the ground thus cleared, the student 
may with some measure of confidence ap- 



Hints for Further Reading 231 

proach the difficult special studies of such 
psychopathologists as Janet, Breuer, Freud, 
and Sidis. Of these the most important, in 
the present connection, is ''Multiple Personal- 
ity" (1905), written by Dr. Sidis in collabora- 
tion with Dr. Simon P. Goodhart. Like Dr. 
Prince's "The Dissociation of a Personality," 
this work has for its central theme an account 
of one of the strangest cases of personality 
disintegration on record; but Drs. Sidis and 
Goodhart — or, to be exact. Dr. Sidis, for 
Dr. Goodhart's connection is only with that 
part of the book dealing strictly with the case 
under review — utilize the opportunity to 
make an elaborate explanation of the psycho- 
pathological concept of the ego. Beginning 
with a biological analysis, in which emphasis 
is placed on the neuron theory, the student is 
conducted by a series of logical steps through 
practically the whole range of psychopatho- 
logical theory and practice, the concluding 
chapters being rich in illustrative experiments 
and cures made by Dr. Sidis. Unfortunately, 
so far as concerns the theoretical aspects, 
''Multiple Personality" bears a close re- 
semblance to Professor Jastrow's "The Sub- 
conscious" in the difficulties it presents on 



232 Appendix VI 

account of the use of technical language and 
an extremely complicated terminology. And 
in this respect it is outdone by Dr. Sidis's 
"Psychopathological Researches" (1907), de- 
tailing the results of the treatment of a num- 
ber of most interesting cases of dissociational 
mimicking of insanity, epilepsy, etc. Both 
these books, however, should be given a care- 
ful reading, and more particularly "Multiple 
Personality," which affords as does no other 
single volume a thorough presentation of the 
evidence supporting the psychopathological 
definition of personality. 

Less technical, though none too easy read- 
ing, and distinctly of the nature of special 
treatises, are the writings of Pierre Janet. 
Professor Janet, who holds the chair of psy- 
chology at the College de France and is also 
director of the psychological laboratory in the 
clinic of the Salpetriere, is a pupil of Charcot's, 
and his chief interest has naturally been in the 
study of victims of hysteria, that insidious 
dissociational malady of multiform manifesta- 
tions. There is probably no greater authority 
on the subject to-day; and Janet's works, 
while intended chiefly for medical men, are 
of a lively interest to the lay reader because 



Hints for Further Reading 233 

of the extent to which hysteria prevails in all 
countries and the dangers to which hysterical 
patients are exposed unless the real nature 
of their trouble be recognized. Hysteria does 
not consist, as is popularly thought, merely in 
nervous outbreaks ranging from fits of un- 
controllable weeping or laughing to some 
form of insanity; it also has peculiar physical 
characteristics, which not unfrequently de- 
ceive physicians as well as untrained observers 
into thinking that relief and cure can be ob- 
tained only through the performance of a 
surgical operation. And even when this is 
not the case, hysteria is productive of phe- 
nomena that may lead to the permanent but 
wholly unnecessary incarceration of its un- 
happy subject in some institution. Further, 
the study of hysteria throws a flood of light on 
the activities of subconsciousness, and is thus 
important if only from the view-point of gain- 
ing a clearer knowledge of personality. Most 
of the standard works in which it is discussed 
necessitate, however, acquaintance with a 
foreign language, and this is in large measure 
true of Janet's treatises, only two or three 
of which have been translated into English. 
Luckily, these include the most recent and 



234 Appendix VI 

the most informative, particularly his "The 
Mental State of Hystericals'' (1901) and 
"The Major Symptoms of Hysteria" (1907). 
The former is an excellent book with which to 
begin the study of the special literature bear- 
ing on the phenomena of dissociation in 
hysteria; the latter contains the lectures de- 
livered by Professor Janet at Harvard Medical 
School in the autumn of 1906, and is a lumi- 
nous review of the characteristic indications 
of the presence of this dread disease. In- 
cidentally, it includes a succinct survey of the 
progress made in the knowledge and treat- 
ment of hysteria from the earliest times to 
the present day. Students having the gift 
of tongues are advised to read also Professor 
Janet's "Nervoses et Idees Fixes" (1898), 
^ ^ L' Automatisme Psy chologique ' ' (new edi- 
tion 1899), and "Les Obsessions et la 
Psychasthenic" (1903); and "Studien uber 
Hysteric" (1895), by the Austrian specialists 
J. Breuer and S. Freud, who utilize for the 
treatment of dissociation a method distinct 
from hypnotism and not unlike Dr. Sidis's 
hypnoidization. In this connection it may 
not be amiss to mention Paul Dubois's *^The 
Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders" 



Hints for Further Reading 235 

(1905), in which a method is described of 
scientifically applying the principle of sugges- 
tion without the intervention of hypnotism, 
hypnoidization, or any other indirect means. 
It only remains to indicate briefly the 
books which may advantageously be read to 
acquire a fuller understanding of spiritism 
and telepathy. For spiritism the great work, 
in fact the one work which it is absolutely 
necessary for the student to procure, is Frank 
Podmore's " Modern Spiritualism '' (1902) . 
This, though written on a more modest scale, 
is for its subject fairly comparable with 
Myer's "Human Personality,'' and is charac- 
terized by fulness of presentation, ease of 
style, and sanity of view-point. Spiritism, as 
Mr. Podmore sees it, is the product of a 
mysticism which traces its origin to the 
witchcraft of the Middle Ages, and includes 
in its pedigree the early superstitions attach- 
ing to the so-called animal magnetism of the 
days of Mesmer, de Puysegur, and Bertrand. 
Coming down to the question of spiritism 
proper, Mr. Podmore gives a realistic account 
of the first period of the movement — the 
period of Andrew Jackson Davis, the Fox 
sisters, etc. — and follows its development 



236 Appendix VI 

to recent times, with a critical analysis of the 
methods of the most celebrated physical and 
psychical mediums from Daniel Dunglas 
Home to Leonora Piper. Should the reader 
be desirous of investigating the subject further 
he may read, among others which he will find 
cited in Mr. Podmore's pages, the following 
books : 

Catharine Crowe's ^^The Night Side of 
Nature" (1848) and "Spiritualism" (1859), 
C. W. Elliott's ''Mysteries, or Glimpses of 
the Supernatural" (1852), E. W. Capron's 
"'Modern Spiritualism: Its Facts and Fa- 
naticisms" (1855), valuable for a detailed 
account of the first phases of the movement; 
Robert Hare's "Experimental Investigation: 
The Spirit Manifestations, etc." (1855), giving 
the results of the first inquiry by a scientist 
into the truth of the phenomena of spiritism, 
but a book which may by no means be taken 
at its face value; Alfred Russel Wallace's 
"The Scientific Aspect of the Supernatural" 
(1866), D. D. Home's "Incidents in My Life" 
(First Series, 1863, Second Series, 1872), 
autobiographical fragments which may be 
supplemented by Mrs. Home's "D. D. Home, 
His Life and Mission" (1888) and "The Gift 



Hints for Further Reading 237 

of D. D. Home'' (1890); R. D, Owen's "The 
Debatable Land" (1871), "Report of the 
London Dialectical Society" (1871), detailing 
the evidence obtained in an inquiry conducted 
for scientific purposes; William Crookes's 
"Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritual- 
ism" (1874), Serjeant Coxs "The Mechanism 
of Man" (1876), J. W. TruesdelFs "The 
Bottom Facts Concerning the Science of 
Spiritualism" (1883), giving the story of a 
number of exposures of fraudulent mediums 
by a shrewd investigator; "The Preliminary 
Report of the Seybert Commission" (1887), 
narrating the results of the labors of a scien- 
tific committee appointed by the University of 
Pennsylvania for the purpose of investigating 
the claims of spiritism; R. B. Davenport's 
"The Death Blow to Spiritualism: Being the 
True Story of the Fox Sisters" (1888); W. 
Stainton Moses's "Works," as found in the 
"Memorial Edition" (1894) with a bio- 
graphical notice of this celebrated English 
medium; Frank Podmore's *' Studies in Psy- 
chical Research" (1897), and W. E. Robin- 
son's "Spirit Slate Writing and Kindred 
Phenomena" (1899), giving the best account 
yet written of the various fraudulent devices 



238 Appendix VI 

used by professional slate-writing mediums. 
The reader who will struggle through these 
works — some of which are uncommonly 
tedious — and supplement them by perusal 
of the "Proceedings of the Society for Psychi- 
cal Research," may rest assured that he has 
obtained full information concerning the rise 
and progress and shortcomings of spiritism, 
at any rate so far as respects the spiritistic 
movement in Anglo-Saxon countries. 

The literature of telepathy, although of far 
more recent origin, promises to become almost 
as voluminous as that of spiritism. Of capi- 
tal importance are the numerous articles and 
reports in the '" Journal'' and ''Proceedings" 
of the Society for Psychical Research, Myers's 
'"Human Personality," and the writings of 
Thomson Jay Hudson, who was perhaps the 
most indefatigable of independent investiga- 
tors. The cooperative production "Phan- 
tasms of the Living," and Frank Podmore's 
"Studies in Psychical Research" and "Appari- 
tions and Thought Transference" (1896), 
should also be carefully examined. For a 
survey of the historical evolution of the 
telepathic hypothesis Mr. Podmore's "Modern 
Spiritualism" will be found useful, particu- 



Hints for Further Reading 239 

larly in the chapters on Mesmer and his 
disciples, spiritism in France and Germany, 
and the EngHsh mesmerists. Dr. R. Osgood 
Mason's "Telepathy and the Subliminal Self 
(1897) may also be commended for informa- 
tiveness. Professor Jastrow's ''Fact and Fable 
in Psychology'' contains a compact criticism 
of the telepathic hypothesis from the ultra- 
scientific standpoint. For a criticism of it 
from the spiritistic standpoint one cannot 
do better than consult Professor Hyslop's 
" Science and a Future Life." 



INDEX. 



Alcoholism, cured by hypnotism, 

72, 186-190. 
Angus, Miss, crystal-gazer, 154- 

155, 203, 219. 
Apparitions, telepathic explana- 
tion of, 31, 143-150; cases of, 

118-125. 
Apports, 12, 117. 
Auditions, cases of, 125-126; 

telepathic explanation of, 143, 

151. 
Automatic speaking and writing, 

13, 66-68, 107, 127-134. 
Azam, Dr., and case of Felida X., 

62, 63, 64. 

B., case of Elsie, 70. 

B., case of Madame, 65-68. 

Babinski, Dr., defends Paris 
school of hypnotism, 60-61. 

Baldwin, H. M., 227. 

Baldwin, J. M., 227. 

Balfour, A., 29. 

Barrett, W. F., proposes or- 
ganization of a society for 
psychical research, 28; other- 
wise mentioned, 30, 31. 

Beauchamp, C. L., case of, 85- 
89, 227. 

Beaunis, Dr., 57, 60. 

Bebee, H., spiritistic medium, 9. 



Berillon, E., 72, 229. 

Bernheim, H., associates himself 
with Liebeault, 5Q; otherwise 
mentioned, VII, 60, 69, 84, 105, 
229. 

Bertrand, A., recognizes the im- 
portance of suggestion, 20; 
otherwise mentioned, 230, 235. 

Binet, A., 60, 69, 227, 229. 

Blavatsky, Madame, case of, 
112-115. 

Bourne, A., case of, 36-41. 

Braid, J., gives hypnotism its 
name, 22; his method of in- 
ducing the hypnotic state, 59; 
otherwise mentioned, 15, 20, 
53, 54, 230. 

Bramwell, J. M., cases of al- 
coholism cured by, 188-189; 
writings of, 228. 

Breuer, J., 192, 231, 234. 

Brougham, Lord, 179. 

C, case of Mrs., 188-189. 

Capron, E. W., 236. 

Census of hallucinations, 177- 

185. 
Charcot, J. M., his work in 

hypnotism, 58-60; writings of, 

229; otherwise mentioned, VII, 

15, 23, 84, 225, 232. 



241 



242 



Index 



Christian Science, definition of, 
VI; remarkable growth of, 10. 

Clairaudience, 13. 

Clairvoyance, 13, 154. 

Colquhoun, J. C, 230. 

Cox, S., 237. 

Crawford, Lord, and D. D. 
Home, 165-171. 

Crookes, W., on requirements in 
psychical research, 108-109; 
investigates D. D. Home, 169- 
171; otherwise mentioned, 29, 
172, 173, 237. 

Crowe, C, 236. 

Crystal-gazing, 13, 107, 154-155. 

D. F., case of, 94-98. 
Darwin, C, 3, 4. 
Davenport, R. B., 237. 
Davey, S. J., duplicates feats of 

slate-writing mediums, 109- 

112. 
Davies, case of Mrs., 125-126, 

151. 
Davis, A. J., career of, 6-8; 

otherwise mentioned, 13, 235. 
Dissociation, cases of, 35-41, 62- 

79, 94-104; curability of, 79, 

94, 105; physical disorders 

caused by, 93; law of, 92-94; 

writings on, 227, 228, 231- 

235. 
Drink habit, hypnotic treatment 

of, 72, 186-190. 
Dubois, P., 234. 
Dunraven, Lord, and D. D. 

Home, 165-171. 



EUiotson, J., pioneer student of 
hypnotism, 15, 20, 22, 23, 53, 
230. 

Elliott, C. W., 236. 

Elongation, 12, 117, 167, 168. 

Esdaile, J., uses hypnotism as 
anesthetic, 21; telepathic ex- 
periments of, 21; otherwise 
mentioned, 15, 20, 53, 230. 

Evolutionary theory, early effects 
of, 3. 

F. G., apparition seen by, 122- 

125, 147-150. 
Fire ordeal, 168-170. 
Fox sisters, 8-9, 163, 235. 
Franklin, B., investigates Mes- 

mer, 19. 
Freud, S., 192, 195, 231, 234. 

Gieson, I. van, head of New York 
Pathological Institute, 90-91. 

Godfrey, C, telepathic appari- 
tion produced by, 140-141, 
143, 203. 

Goodhart, S. P., and the Hanna 
case, 101-104, 231. 

Gurney, E., advances knowledge 
of hypnotism and telepathy, 
30; writings of, 223; otherwise 
mentioned, 16, 23, 31, 53, 113, 
137, 145, 202. 

Hallucinations, produced by hyp- 
notism, 69-70; removed by 
hypnotism, 76; telepathic, 137- 
143; census of, 177-185; fre- 
quency of, 179. 



Index 



243 



Hanna, T. C, case oF, 102-104. 

Hare, R., 236. 

Harvard Medical School, Janet's 
lectures at, 62, 234; Sidis's 
experiments at, 197, 

Herter, C. A., 229. 

Hodgson, R., and case of A. 
Bourne, 37-41; and case of 
Madame Blavatsky, 114-115; 
and case of Eusapia Paladino, 
116-117; and case of Mrs. 
Piper, 128, 131-134; converted 
to spiritism, 133; becomes a 
"control" of Mrs. Piper's, 134; 
criticises telepathy, 200. 

Hoffman, F. S., 225. 

Home, D. D., mediumship of, 12, 
162-173; otherwise mentioned, 
127, 236. 

Home, Mrs. D. D., 236. 

Hudson, T. J., telepathic experi- 
ments of, 138-139, 152-154; 
writings of, 223-224, 238; 
otherwise mentioned, 47, 156. 

Hydesville rappings, 8-9, 163. 

Hypnoidization, 103, 191-199. 

Hypnotism, as practised by Mes- 
mer, 17-19; Esdaile's work in, 
21; EUiotson's theories of, 22; 
Liebeault's work in, 54-58; 
the Nancy school of, 55 ; Char- 
cot's work in, 58-60; conflict- 
ing views of the Nancy and 
Paris schools of, 60-61; lost 
memories recalled by, 68; 
some therapeutic uses of, 71- 
79; importance of, in treat- 



Hypnotism — continued 

ment of mental and nervous 
disease, 80, 85-89, 96-100; as 
an explanation of certain 
spiritistic phenomena, 171- 
173; as a cure of alcoholism, 
186-190; writings on, 228- 
230. 

Hyslop, J. H., investigates Mrs. 
Piper, 133-134; criticises tele- 
pathy, 200-219; writings of, 
222-223; otherwise mentioned, 
Vni, 13, 239. 

Hysteria, cured by hypnotism, 
76; nature of, 233. 

Insanity, statistics showing in- 
crease of, 80-82; and psy- 
chopathology, 105. 

J. F., case of, 98-100. 

James W., and case of A. Bourne, 
37, 41 ; and case of Mrs. Piper, 
127-128, 134; otherwise men- 
tioned, VIH, 26, 29, 47, 90, 
226. 

Janet, J., 74. 

Janet, P., and case of Felida X., 
62; and case of Madame B., 
65-68; writings of, 232-234; 
otherwise mentioned, VII, IX, 
60, 75, 84, 105, 192, 195, 225, 
229. 

Jastrow, J., on the subliminal 
self, 50-51; writings of, 224- 
225, 231, 239. 

Johnson, A., 177. 






4 



244 



Index 



Kirk, telepathic apparition pro- 
duced by Mr., 141-142, 143. 
Koons, J., spiritistic medium, 11. 

Lang, A., 153, 154-155, 203, 

219. 
Levitation, 12, 117, 164-167. 
Liebeault, A. A., career of, 54- 

58; otherwise mentioned, VII, 

16, 23, 60, 69, 71, 84, 105, 225, 

229, 230. 
Liegeois, Dr., 57, 60, 69. 
Lodge, O., and case of Mrs. 

Piper, 129-130, 157; otherwise 

mentioned, 29. 
London Dialectical Society, 165, 

167, 237. 

Mason, R. O., 239. 

Massey, C. C, 31. 

Memories recalled by hypnotism, 
68; recalled by hypnoidization, 
103. 

Mental faculties improved by 
hypnotism, 72. 

Mesmer, F. A., career of, 15-20; 
fluidic theory of, 17, 19; other- 
wise mentioned, 20, 53, 230, 
235, 239. 

Mesmerism. See Hypnotism. 

Mitchell, W., 41. 

Moll, A., 229. 

Morselli, H., and Eusapia Pala- 
dino, 173-176. 

Moses, W. S., spiritistic medium, 
31, 127, 237. 

Myers, A. T., 177. 



Myers, F. W. H., characteristics 
of, 26; his theory of the sub- 
liminal self, 42-46; importance 
of his "Human PersonaHty," 
42, 220-221; criticises Paris 
school of hypnotism, 61, 214; 
on case of Madame B., 65; on 
case of Marceline R., 73-75; 
on the census of hallucina- 
tions, 182-184; otherwise men- 
tioned, 28, 29, 30, 31, 53, 113, 
118, 129, 137, 145, 151, 157, 
177, 202, 238. 

Nancy school of hypnotism, 55y 

61, 71. 
Neuralgia, cured by hypnotism, 

73. 
Neuron theory, 92-94. 

Owen, R. D., 237. 

P., case of Madame, 77. 

Paladino, E., spiritistic medium, 
112, 115-117, 163, 173-176. 

Paris school of hj^notism, 60-61. 

Pathological Institute of New 
York, 90-92. 

Pelham, G., one of Mrs. Piper's 
"controls," 131-132, 215. 

Personality, orthodox view of, 
33; view held by Myers and 
other psychical researchers, 
42 - 46 ; psychopathological 
view of, 159-160; cases of dis- 
integration of, 35-41, 62-68, 
85-89, 100-104; divisibility of. 



Index 



245 



Personality — continued 
proved, 61; ultimate unity of, 
proved, 69; evidence for sur- 
vival of, 107-135; impossible 
to obtain scientifically accept- 
able proof of survival, 157; but 
valid reasons for believing in 
survival, 161-162; writings on, 
220-239. 

Phobies, cured by hypnotism, 76- 
79. 

Piper, L. E., spiritistic medium, 
13, 127-134, 155, 156-157, 
200-219, 236. 

Plummer, W. S., 41. 

Podmore, A., experiences with 
S. J. Davey, 110-112. 

Podmore, F., experiences with 
S. J. Davey, 110-112; writings 
of, 235, 238; otherwise men- 
tioned, 19, 31, 113, 141, 156, 
177. 

Prince, M., advances psycho- 
pathological knowledge, 84; 
and the Beauchamp case, 85- 
89; writings of, 227, 231 ; other- 
wise mentioned, VII, IX, 92. 

Psychical research, beginnings of, 
25-32; results of, VIII, 29, 
158-160. See also Society for 
Psychical Research. 

Psychopathology, originated in 
France, 16, 54; cures by 
French practitioners, 54-79; 
cures by American practition- 
ers, 84-104. 

Puysegur, Marquis de, 230, 235. 



Q., apparition of Mr., 118-121, 

144-145. 
Que, case of, 77-79. 

R., case of Marceline, 73-75. 

R., case of Mr., 100-101, 148, 
199. 

Reid, T., on the nature of per- 
sonality, 33. 

Reynolds, case of M., 34-36. 

Rheumatism, cured by hyp- 
notism, 73. 

Richet, C, 29, 166. 

Robinson, W. E., 237. 

Salpetriere, 58, 83, 105, 214, 215, 
228, 232. 

Sciatica, cured by h5^notism, 5Qy 
73. 

Sidgwick, H., characteristics of, 
25; otherwise mentioned, 28, 
29, 30, 53, 114, 137, 177, 
202. 

Sidgwick, Mrs. H., 30, 114, 177. 

Sidis, B., career of, 89; and law 
of dissociation, 92-94; and 
cases of D. F., J. F., Mr. R., 
and T. C. Hanna, 94-104; 
method of hypnoidization, 103, 
191-199; writings of, 227, 
231-232; otherwise mentioned, 
VII, IX, 91, 105, 148, 188, 
225. 

Slate writing, 12, 109-112. 

Society for Psychical Research, 
organized, 28; aims and 
methods of, 28-29; telepathic 



246 



Index 



Society for Psychical Research — 
continiied 
experiments by, 30-32; reports 
favorably on telepathy, 31; 
attitude towards the physical 
phenomena of spiritism, 107; 
investigates Madame Blavat- 
sky, 113-115; investigates 
Eusapia Paladino, 1 1 6-1 1 7 ; 
cases of apparitions collected 
by, 118-125; investigates Mrs. 
Piper, 128-134; importance of 
records of, 221-222, 238. 

Spiritism, as a reHgious system, 
5; contrasted with spiritual- 
ism, 6; beginnings of, 6-15; 
the phenomena of, 12, 13, 107, 
117; Crookes's criticism of, 
108-109; writings on, 235-238. 
See also Apparitions, Audi- 
tions, Crystal-gazing, Halluci- 
nations, Home, Hypnotism, 
Myers, Paladino, Personality, 
Piper, Psychical Research, So- 
ciety for Psychical Research, 
Suggestion, and Telepathy. 

Stack, J. H., 114. 

Subliminal self, Myers's theory 
of, 42-46; combatted by ortho- 
dox psychologists, 48-52; but 
vindicated by the evidence 
obtained through psychical 
research and psychopathology, 
160-161. See also Person- 
ality. 

Suggestion, root element in mes- 
merism, 17; importance of. 



Suggestion — continued 

first emphasized by Bertrand, 
20; further developed by Braid, 
22-23; as utilized by Liebeault, 
54-58; impoi-tance in hypno- 
tism denied by Charcot, 59; 
influence on bodily organism 
recognized by Nancy school, 
71; a factor in the production 
of spiritistic phenomena, 171- 
173, 213-218. 

Swedenborg, E., 6, 18. 

Tamlin, Mrs., spiritistic me- 
dium, 10. 

Telepathy, Esdaile's experiments 
in, 21; evidence for, 27, 137- 
143, 152, 155 177,185; experi- 
ments of Society for Psychical 
Research, 30-32; denied by 
many scientists, 47, 136; as an 
explanation of the psychical 
phenomena of spiritism, 136, 
144-157; criticised by Hyslop, 
200-219; writings on, 238- 
239. 

Theosophical Society, 112-115. 

Thompson, I. C, and Mrs. Piper, 
130. 

Thought transference. See 
Telepathy. 

Truesdell, J. W., 237. 

Tuckey, C. L., 229. 

Wallace, A. R., 3, 4, 236. 
Wambey, audition heard by Mr., 
125. 



Index 



247 



Wesermann, telepathic appa- 
rition produced by Herr, 142- 
143. 

Wetterstrand, O., 229. 

White, W. A., IX., 94-98. 



Wynne, Captain, and D. D. 
Home, 165. 

X., case of Felida, 62-64. 

Z., apparition of Julia, 122, 147. 



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